Russians vow to fire first if missile shield plan proceeds

Russia’s top military officer has threatened to carry a pre-emptive strike on Nato missile defence facilities in Eastern Europe if America goes ahead with a plan to build a missile shield.

The comments came at an international conference attended by senior US and officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation over the proposed project.

Talks looked set to end in failure yesterday after Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov warned they were “close to a dead end”.

Moscow fears its security will be threatened by the missile plan. Russia’s chief of general staff General Nikolai Makarov said: “A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens.”

Moscow rejects Washington’s claim the missile system is solely to deal with any Iranian missile threat and has voiced fears it could undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Moscow has proposed running the missile shield jointly with Nato, but the alliance has rejected that proposal.

Gen Makarov’s statement does not appear to imply an immediate threat, but aims to put extra pressure on Washington to agree to Russia’s demands.

The two-day conference in Moscow is the last major Russia-US meeting about military issues before a Nato summit in Chicago this month. Russia has not yet said whether it will send a top-level delegation.

In a lively exchange during a conference side session, officials talked about the high level of distrust between the two sides.

“We can’t just reject the distrust that has been around for decades and become totally different people,” Russian deputy defence minister Anatoly Antonov said. “Why are they calling on me, on my Russian colleagues, to reject distrust? Better look at yourselves in the mirror.”

US State Department special envoy Ellen Tauscher said neither country could afford another arms race.

She said: “It’s going to have to take a political leap of faith and it’s going to take some trust that we have to borrow, perhaps, from each other and for each other, but why don’t we do it for the next generation?”

President Barack Obama’s administration tried to ease tensions with Russia in 2009 by saying it would revamp a plan to emphasise shorter-range interceptors. Russia initially welcomed that but has recently suggested the new interceptors could threaten its missiles as the US interceptors are upgraded.

The US-Nato missile defence plans use Aegis radars and interceptors on ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey in the first phase, followed by radar and interceptor facilities in Romania and Poland.

Russia would not plan any retaliation unless the US goes through with its plans and takes the third and final step and deploys defence elements in Poland, Mr Antonov said. That is estimated to happen no earlier than in 2018.

Russia has just commissioned a radar in Kaliningrad, near the Polish border, capable of monitoring missile launches from Europe and the North Atlantic.

Yesterday, at the start of the conference attended by representatives of about 50 countries, Russia’s Security Council secretary reiterated an offer to run the missile shield with Nato. Nikolai Patrushev said this “could strengthen the security of every single country of the continent” and “will not deter strategic security.”

Nato deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, insisted the missile shield was “not and will not be directed against Russia” and that Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles were “too fast and too sophisticated” for the system to intercept.