NATO Military Chief Says Troops Would Be on Ground if Not for Russian Nukes
NATO troops would be on the ground in Ukraine fighting Russian forces if Moscow did not have nuclear weapons, the head of the alliance's military committee has said.
"I am absolutely sure if the Russians did not have nuclear weapons, we would have been in Ukraine, kicking them out," Admiral Rob Bauer, the outgoing chief of NATO's Military Committee, said during an appearance at the IISS Prague Defence Summit in the Czech Republic on Sunday.
Russia has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, followed closely by the U.S.' nuclear arsenal. Combined, Moscow and Washington control around 90 percent of the nuclear weapons across the globe.
As Moscow's troops poured into Ukraine in late February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin placed his country's nuclear deterrence forces on high alert. Months later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the risks of nuclear conflict had become "considerable."
Prominent Russian officials, such as former President Dmitry Medvedev, who has stayed on as a hawkish voice on the Kremlin political scene, as well as Russian state television commentators, have frequently mentioned the prospect of nuclear war. Some state media hosts and guests have suggested that Moscow should launch nuclear strikes on countries, such as the U.S. and U.K., that support Kyiv's war effort.
Putin said in March this year that Russia was militarily equipped and "ready" for nuclear war. António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said in September 2022 that the idea of nuclear war had been "once unthinkable," but now was "a subject of debate."
"This in itself is totally unacceptable," Guterres said.
In NATO, the U.S., the United Kingdom and France have nuclear weapons, but several other European bases also host U.S. tactical nuclear weapons.
NATO troops being committed to the fight on Ukraine's behalf has largely been off the table, although foreign fighters have joined Ukraine's military as volunteers.
In February, French President Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending Western soldiers. The remarks were quickly downplayed by other NATO countries, and then-secretary general of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said it was not considering sending troops to the battlefield. U.S. President Joe Biden has consistently said there would be no U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.
The alliance has said it supports Ukraine, but that it is not directly involved in the conflict. NATO countries, which spent years in Afghanistan and in Iraq shortly after the turn of the century, are very reluctant to broach the subject of deploying their own ground troops in Ukraine. Kyiv has said it has not asked its supporters for troops, only military aid.
"If you fight in Afghanistan, that's not the same as fighting the Russians in Ukraine," because the Taliban did not have nuclear weapons, Bauer said. "There is a big difference between Afghanistan and Ukraine."