Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova announced on Tuesday that Moscow considers any move to return US nuclear weapons to the UK as an escalation and will respond with “countermeasures” to ensure its security.
Zakharova was responding to a report published last week about the US Air Force’s 2024 budget to build a dormitory for nuclear security personnel at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. Such reports raised the possibility of US nuclear weapons being brought back to British soil for the first time in more than 15 years.
Russia Warns of ‘Escalation’
According to Russian state news service TASS, Zakharova said, “If this step is ever made, we will view it as escalation, as a step toward escalation that would take things to a direction that is quite opposite to addressing the pressing issue of pulling all nuclear weapons out of European countries.”
She criticised the move as a destabilising practice, which is purely anti-Russian, as it foresees joint planning and practising regularly for nuclear attacks on Russia from European countries not involved in nuclear weapons.
The diplomat asserted that Moscow will take necessary countermeasures to “safeguard security interests of our country and its allies.” Zakharova also pledged further efforts to demand the return of all US nuclear weapons to US soil before destroying the infrastructure that allows nuclear weapons to be deployed in Europe.
US nuclear assets could return to UK soil, raising questions about global security dynamics. Investigative findings hint at changes in nuclear weapons missions outside the US. 👇https://t.co/d7sapL2kvt
— Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) September 3, 2023
US to Station Nuclear Weapons in UK
According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a global policy think tank, the US has deployed 100 B61 gravity bombs in Europe and another 100 B61 bombs in the US, the only tactical weapon in its arsenal. If US nuclear weapons were returned to Lakenheath, they would almost certainly be a modernised version of the B61.
Matt Korda, senior researcher at the FAS Nuclear Information Project, who first spotted the US budget line for a surety dormitory at Lakenheath, said: “While the potential return of US nuclear weapons to UK soil certainly merits scrutiny, it’s a bit rich to see it coming from a government who has spent the past year initiating the exact same thing with Belarus.”
UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, or CND, said the move threatened to return nuclear weapons to RAF Lakenheath, 100 km (62 miles) north of London, where 110 US nuclear weapons were stored until they were removed in 2008 after persistent protests.
Reports indicate that about 100 warheads were stored at RAF Lakenheath, the same base now being expanded to support US personnel from February 2026, when new dormitories are expected to be completed.
FAS previously reported that the Pentagon had included the UK in its 2023 budget, saying it had helped the UK and other countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, by investing $384 million in infrastructure for the storage of ‘special weapons’ over 13 years.