The Pentagon sees no change in Russia’s strategic nuclear forces

As the Pentagon announced on Monday, Russia’s deployment of strategic nuclear forces has not changed. Despite Moscow’s “irresponsible rhetoric,” it included plans for exercises to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Russia said on Monday it would hold military exercises involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons after Moscow issued threats from France, Britain and the United States. The exercises were conducted at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Defense Ministry said the Southern Military District Missile Forces, Air Transport and Navy will participate.

US Air Force Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “We have not seen any change in strategic force posture. We will continue to monitor this.

The exercise, which aims to protect Russia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, will involve the so-called non-strategic nuclear forces, the Defense Ministry said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the drills were aimed at cooling off “hotheads” in the West who Moscow accuses of pushing for direct military conflict between the US-led NATO military alliance and Russia.

Ryder dismissed Moscow’s comments.

“This is an example of the kind of reckless rhetoric we’ve seen from Russia in the past. It’s completely inappropriate in the current security situation,” Ryder said.

Russia and the United States are by far the world’s largest nuclear powers, with more than 10,600 of the world’s 12,100 nuclear weapons. China has the third largest nuclear arsenal, followed by France and Great Britain.

Russia has about 1,560 non-strategic nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists, although exact numbers are unclear due to a lack of transparency.