The Russian Foreign Ministry has no information on nuclear weapons deployment in Crimea, but maintains that the country has the right to do so in principle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if there are any nuclear weapons there at the moment and I am not aware of such plans, but in principle Russia can do this<\/em>,\u201d the head of the ministry\u2019s Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Weapons Control, Mikhail Ulyanov, told a Wednesday press conference in Moscow.<\/p>\n \u201cNaturally Russia has the right to put nuclear weapons in any region on its territory if it deems it necessary. We hold that we have such a right, though Kiev has a different opinion on this matter<\/em>,\u201d RIA Novosti quoted Ulyanov as saying.<\/p>\n In mid-January this year, Russia\u2019s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said that in 2015 the nation will focus on reinforcing its military on the Crimean Peninsula.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2015, the Defense Ministry\u2019s main efforts will focus on an increase of combat capabilities of the armed forces and increasing the military staff in accordance with military construction plans. Much attention will be given to the groupings in Crimea, Kaliningrad and the Arctic<\/em>,\u201d Gerasimov said.<\/p>\n Earlier this month Russia\u2019s Navy chief, Admiral Viktor Chirkov, announced plans for a major rearmament of the force, including the Black Sea Fleet stationed in Sevastopol, Crimea.<\/p>\n The Crimean Republic became part of the Russian Federation a year ago, after over 96 percent of its residents \u2013 the majority of whom are ethnic Russians \u2013 voted for the move in an urgently called referendum. The decision was prompted by the change of regime in Ukraine, which ousted the democratically-elected president and government.<\/p>\n In mid-March this year Russia\u2019s public opinion research center VTSIOM conducted a poll that showed that today over 90 percent of Crimean residents have positive feelings about the reunification with Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russian Foreign Ministry has no information on nuclear weapons deployment in Crimea, but maintains that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[23,6,24,5,31,20,22,63],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-crimea","tag-defense","tag-eu","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-weapons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Russia-Crimea-Nuclear-Weapons.jpg?fit=690%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-mZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions\/1442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}