Russia does not intend to disclose information about the storage places of its tactical nuclear weapons or about their amount, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry department for security and disarmament Mikhail Ulyanov has said.
"Yes, we are invited to adopt some confidence-building measures by disclosing the storage places of the armaments and their quantity. But whom will it make life easier for, if we disclose such information? Only for terrorists. Should we be creating problems there where they are absent so far?" he wondered in an interview with Interfax.
Commenting on the calls of the United States and NATO to reduce Russian tactical nuclear armaments Ulyanov said: "The subject of Russian tactical nuclear armament is far-fetched and fanned quite artificially."
"In the past 20 year Russia reduced its tactical nuclear armaments by 75%. All these armaments are deployed solely in Russian territory. They are stored at centralized storage facilities, i.e. are not deployed and pose no threat to anyone," he said.
Meanwhile, "the situation is absolutely different with NATO and Americans," he said."Approximately 200 tactical nuclear warheads are located in six countries of Europe and they are deployed. Which means they pose a potential threat to us," Ulyanov said.
"Moreover, NATO has such a notion as nuclear sharing which means that pilots from non-nuclear countries are trained to pilot nuclear-carrying aircraft," he went on to say. "From the viewpoint of nuclear nonproliferation this is a violation of the letter and sprit of the NPT. Many countries share this viewpoint," Ulyanov said.
"We are not refusing to conduct a dialogue but we don't see a subject of even a preliminary conversation until all these weapons are withdrawn beyond Europe and before the infrastructure that permits their rapid return to the European continent is liquidated," the diplomat said.
"The practice of the said exercises should also be stopped," he said
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_02_02/Russia-wont-diclose-info-tactical-nuclear-weapons-quantities-or-location-Foreign-Ministry-8907/