Risk of nuclear war in Europe growing, warns Russian ex-minister

Source: Reuters

The East-West standoff over the Ukraine crisis has brought the threat of nuclear war in Europe closer than at any time since the 1980s, a former Russian foreign minister warned on Saturday.

"The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than in the 1980s," said Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and now head of a Moscow-based think-tank founded by the Russian government.

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Ivanov blamed a missile defense shield that the United States is setting up in Europe for raising the stakes.

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"It can be assured that once the U.S. deploys its missile defense system in Poland, Russia would respond by deploying its own missile defense system in Kaliningrad," Ivanov said, referring to Russia's territory in the Baltics.

In remarks that are likely to alarm European and NATO diplomats seeking a political solution to the separatist conflict in Ukraine that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014, Ivanov also said Europe and Russia have little chance of a broader reconciliation.

"The paths of Europe and Russia are seriously diverging and will remain so for a long time ... probably for decades to come," Ivanov said, adding that Russia could not be the eastern flank of a "failed greater Europe."

"These beautiful plans, we have to forget," he said, adding that Russia's destiny was now as the leader of a greater Eurasia stretching from Belarus to the Chinese border.


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