Yesterday President of Russia ordered on launching battle readiness of the missile warning system Voronezh-DM in Kaliningrad region. Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow expects that the Western partners will consider the situation as readiness of Moscow to adequate response to threats from the European missile defense system. At the same time, some experts think that even though the radar station is a defense element, rather than attacking, but it can be an issue of concern for the European countries, if the missile complexes Iskander are launched.
Within strengthening of confrontation between Russia and the NATO on location of the missile defense system in the North Europe, Russian experts suggest their own view on the developments. During the round-table “European missile defense system: is it far for the point of no return?” the head of the Center of Social and Political Research Vladimir Yevseyev shared with his point of view. He believes that at the moment Russia and the USA have no chance of reaching an agreement. It became clear after the meeting in Honolulu in Hawaii, when differences between positions of two sides became so obvious that a corresponding statement was only a question of time.
Vladimir Yevseyev underlined the fact that recently tensions between Russia and the USA have been significantly deteriorating. In connection with this one can recall that Russia used its right of veto concerning the resolution on Syria in the Security Council. Russia believes that new sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran are unnecessary regarding its nuclear program. Russia and the USA disagree on the development of events in North Africa and Middle East. Apart from that, we are in the middle of the pre-election campaign. But I would like to say that our pre-election campaign was not the main reason underlying this statement.
Russia can offer NATO information resources at its disposal for the creation of a combined missile defense system. For instance, two radio-location stations, one of the Daryal type in Gabala, Azerbaijan and another one, which is much newer, the DM radio-location station in Voronezh. In fact, what we are offering for the creation of a combined missile defense system is not enough, because the USA has a radio-location station in Israel, in the near future they will build a radio-location station in the South-East of Turkey. They have a very strong covering from space of all the objects and territories that interest them. If Russia had systems similar to the Aegis, at least similar to the system which the USA is planning to build in Romania, then we could talk about the compatibility of the Russian and the American system which will be located in Europe. In fact Russia has counter air defense systems, which provides certain opportunities regarding interception of ballistic missiles, especially of the specific modification of S-300. However, the current interception height ability of this system is only 30 km.
Since Russia does not possess any striking elements and since the system which Russia has on the borders of Moscow cannot be principally integrated into any European missile defense system, the position of Russia at negotiations is rather weak. Yevseyev thinks that we should not overestimate the threat of those systems which America is planning to build in Europe. There are possibilities of interception, but they exist only for certain objects located on the territory of certain Russian land divisions, provided that certain trajectories of firing are met, the procedure is carried out automatically and a number of other conditions. In fact, under some specific conditions, interception is probably possible, but the accomplishment of all conditions and realization of them is practically almost impossible. “At the moment I see no reasons for the creation of a single system of missile defense,” Yevseyev concluded.
