Russia 'can deploy nuke weapons in Crimea'

Russia has said that it has the right to deploy nuclear weapons to Crimea, a year after Vladimir Putin seized the territory from Ukraine following a referendum.

Home to the strategic Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, which already housed Russia's fleet before the Ukrainian crisis erupted at the start of 2014, Crimea is significantly nearer central Europe than any nuclear base Russia is thought to control.

"I don't know if there are nuclear weapons there now," a Russian foreign ministry official told the Interfax news agency yesterday.

"I don't know about any plans, but in principle Russia can do it," said Mikhail Ulyanov, who is the head of the ministry's department on arms control.

The comments come at a highly sensitive time for international relations around the Black Sea, after Nato members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey joined four other alliance states in a multinational naval exercise there on Tuesday. The US, Canada, Germany and Italy also took part in the military drills, including an American flagship, the guided missile cruiser USS Vicksburg.

And it comes as Russia becomes increasingly bold in stating the details of how it took Crimea, an act still deemed illegal by most international bodies.

Meanwhile, Nato head Jens Stoltenberg yesterday said he was "disappointed" by Russia's decision to quit the landmark Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe as arms control efforts remained important to all sides.

President Vladimir Putin suspended Russia's participation in the CFE in 2007, charging that US deployments violated its terms. On Tuesday Moscow said it would no longer take part in the CFE's consultative committee's work in Vienna.

The CFE was finalised in 1990 at the end of the Cold War and set limits on the numbers of troops and military equipment that Nato and the then Russian-led Warsaw Pact could deploy in Europe.

The collapse of the Soviet Union made many of its provisions redundant but the treaty remained a keystone arms control achievement, helping stabilise relations with Russia in the post-Communist turmoil of the 1990s.