International security

RUSSIA GOT RID OF ITS COLD WAR-ERA NUKES IN EUROPE—NOW IT WANTS THE U.S. TO DO THE SAME

Russia is calling on the U.S. to pull back nuclear weapons that were deployed in European ally states, boasting that Moscow has already done its part for nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War, state news agency RIA Novostireported.

“Russia has withdrawn all of its nuclear arsenal inside its national territory,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the arms-control department at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Monday. “We think that the same should also have been done by the American side.”

According to Ulyanov, the weapons in question number “around 200 aerial bombs.” He quoted ex-U.S. officials who claimed that ongoing upgrades to air-dropped bombs could minimize hypothetical civilian casualties.