North Atlantic Alliance countries have launched consultations on the need to put nuclear warheads on alert, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
“I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be on alert… but we need to consult on these issues. That is exactly what we are doing,” Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
The alliance secretary general pointed out that NATO should demonstrate its nuclear arsenal to the world to send a direct signal to the enemies of the North Atlantic Alliance.
He added that he was particularly concerned about China, which is actively investing in advanced weapons and plans to increase the number of its nuclear warheads to one thousand by the early 2030s.
“And that means that in the not too distant future, NATO is likely to face something it has not faced before, namely two potential nuclear-armed adversaries, China and Russia. And, of course, this has consequences,” Stoltenberg concluded.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Western ideas of a new world order hypocrisy. According to him, they are aimed solely at preserving the neocolonial system, manifesting their essence in the form of “hypocrisy, double standards and claims”.
