Image copyright EPA Image caption The Iskander system (file photo) could reach the German capital, Berlin

Russia has deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in its western-most region, Kaliningrad, which borders on Nato members Poland and Lithuania.

Poland said the development was of the "highest concern", adding it was monitoring the situation.

Russia's defence ministry said the new deployment was part of military exercises and had happened before.

The US and Nato have seen disagreements with Russia intensify in recent times, particularly over Syria and Ukraine.

Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

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The Iskander system has a range of up to 700km (440 miles) and could reach the German capital, Berlin.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz called Russia's activities "very alarming".

And a US intelligence official told Reuters the move could be to express displeasure at Nato. Nato is boosting its eastern flank by deploying four battalions in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia next year.

Kaliningrad facts

Koenigsberg, as the city of Kaliningrad was once known, was founded by Teutonic knights in the 13th Century. It was once the capital of Prussia

Annexed from Germany after WWII. Germans fled or were expelled

Is more than 300km away from Russia, which can only be reached through an EU country

It houses the Russian Baltic Fleet and is the country's only ice-free European port

The philosopher Immanuel Kant spent all his life in the city and died there in 1804

Kaliningrad profile

But Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the deployment was "not exceptional".

Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support for rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine provoked considerable alarm in this region that Moscow might also consider aggressive action against countries on Nato's eastern flank, says the BBC's Adam Eston in Warsaw.

Nato sought to soothe those fears at its Warsaw summit in July by announcing it would deploy troops to both the Baltic states and Poland, our correspondent says.

Nato said it was a purely defensive action but Moscow sees it as a threat and the deployment of the missiles could be viewed as a counter measure, he adds.

Iskanders were sent to Kaliningrad during military drills last year.

Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continue to test relations with Western powers.

Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia are among nations reporting recent air-space violations by Russia's military.</s>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland said Saturday it is highly concerned that Russia has moved nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad, a Russian region on Poland’s northeastern border.

Russia, meanwhile, says the missiles are being deployed as part of regular military maneuvers to Kaliningrad.

The development comes amid heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Syria.

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Poland considers the matter of “highest concern” and is monitoring the situation.

The Iskander, which can be equipped with a conventional or a nuclear warhead, has a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles), placing most of Poland within its reach when they are in Kaliningrad.

“The Iskander ballistic missile system is mobile,” he said in a statement Saturday. “As part of the plan of combat training, missile troops units are engaged in training on a year-round basis, covering great distances of the Russian territory in various ways: by air, by sea, and under their own power.”

Wedged between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad is vital to Russia’s strategic position. Separated from the Russian mainland by 435 miles (700 kilometers), it is the westernmost part of Russia. It houses the Russian Baltic Fleet, as well as multiple land forces and an air force detachment with fighters, bombers and helicopters, as well as an early-warning radar system and other equipment.</s>The United States believes that Russia has moved powerful nuclear-capable ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad, a region along the Baltic coast bordering Poland and Lithuania, Reuters reports Saturday.

According to Reuters, citing an unnamed source in U.S. intelligence, Russia has deployed nuclear-capable Iskander-M ballistic missile systems in Kaliningrad region.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the reasons of deployment of the ballistic missile systems in Kaliningrad “could be innocuous.”

There still are no comments of the Russian side in connection with the statement.

According to the annual report ‘International Security and Estonia 2016’, published in March by the Estonian Information Department (also known as the Estonian Information System Authority), which deals with foreign intelligence, Estonian authorities fear the Iskander cruise missiles, deployed near Kaliningrad region and the borders with Estonia and Latvia. However, at the same time, the report noted that the use of tactical nuclear weapons against facilities, located in Estonia, or units of the NATO, stationed here, is unlikely.

Russia does not have any restrictions on deployment of the systems, but in any case it is necessary to analyze the military situation, Permanent Representative of Russia to the NATO, Alexander Grushko, said in late June, commenting on the possibility of deployment the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile, Chief of Missile Forces and Artillery of the Russian Ground Forces, Major General Mikhail Matveevsky said in May 2015 that the missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, deployed in Kaliningrad region, as all other missile brigades, will be rearmed with the Iskander-M operational-tactical systems by 2018.</s>WARSAW, Poland — The Polish government says it is highly concerned that Russia has moved nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad, a Russian region on Poland's border.

Russia says the missiles are being deployed as part of regular military maneuvers to the territory, which is wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Saturday that Poland considers the matter of "highest concern."

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, however, played down the concerns.

In a statement Saturday he says "The Iskander ballistic missile system is mobile. As part of the plan of combat training, missile troops units are engaged in training on a year-round basis, covering great distances of the Russian territory in various ways: by air, by sea, and under their own power."</s>WARSAW, Poland — Poland and Estonia expressed concerns Saturday that Russia has moved nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles into Kaliningrad, a Russian region on the Baltic Sea, with one official saying Russia appears eager to dominate that body of water.

Russia, meanwhile, says the missiles are being deployed as part of regular military maneuvers to Kaliningrad.

The development comes amid heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Syria.

"It seems to me that this is yet another step in the general context of escalation that we see, at least in rhetoric," said outgoing Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, according to Estonian broadcaster ERR.

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Poland considers the matter of "highest concern" and is monitoring the situation.

The chief of staff of the Estonian Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Riho Terras told ERR that he sees the move as part of a larger Russian attempt to dominate the Baltic Sea.

"In the long term, Russia's wish is to bring the Baltic Sea and the passages leading to it more and more under its control, and to control it much like it does the Black Sea," Terras said.

Wedged between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad is vital to Russia's strategic position. Separated from the Russian mainland by 435 miles (700 kilometers), it is the westernmost part of Russia. It houses the Russian Baltic Fleet, as well as multiple land forces and an air force detachment with fighters, bombers and helicopters, as well as an early-warning radar system and other equipment.

The Iskander, which can be equipped with a conventional or a nuclear warhead, has a range of at least 500 kilometers (310 miles), placing most of Poland within its reach when it is in Kaliningrad.

"The Iskander ballistic missile system is mobile," he said in a statement Saturday. "As part of the plan of combat training, missile troops are engaged in training on a year-round basis, covering great distances of the Russian territory in various ways: by air, by sea, and under their own power."

He also said Russia used the deployment to figure out what range a U.S. spy satellite has.

"We exposed one Iskander before loading it on the Ambal (a cargo carrier) right under a U.S. reconnaissance satellite flying above in order to verify the parameters of that space apparatus. We did not have to wait too long (for results)," he said, without elaborating.

Other countries in the region are also nervous.

Finland and the United States signed a bilateral defense cooperation pact Friday pledging closer military collaboration at the time when the Nordic country is increasingly concerned over neighboring Russia's activities in the Baltic Sea.

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.</s>he U.S. government for the first time on Friday formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," a U.S. government statement said on Friday about hacking of political groups.

"These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

U.S. intelligence officials concluded weeks ago that the Russian government was conducting or orchestrating cyber attacks against the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, possibly to disrupt or discredit the election, in which Democrat Hillary Clinton faces Republican Donald Trump.

A Kremlin spokesman called the U.S. allegations "nonsense", the Interfax news agency reported.

On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. accusations lacked any proof and were an attempt by Washington to fan "unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria".

"This whipping up of emotions regarding 'Russian hackers' is used in the U.S. election campaign, and the current U.S. administration, taking part in this fight, is not averse to using dirty tricks," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Saturday in comments posted on the ministry's website.

The Obama administration's decision to blame Russia for the attacks is the latest downward turn in U.S. relations with Moscow, which are under strain over Russia's actions in Syria and Ukraine and in cyberspace.

Also on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russian and Syrian actions in the Syrian civil war, including bombings of hospitals, "beg for" a war crimes investigation.

In addition, a U.S. intelligence official said on Friday that Russia was moving short-range nuclear-capable missiles into Kaliningrad, a tiny Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, confirming Estonian news reports.</s>WASHINGTON — Vladimir Putin's serial humiliations of America's bewildered secretary of state regarding Syria indicate Putin's determination to destabilize the world. Here is an even more ominous indication of events moving his way: On just one day last week, Italian ships plucked 6,055 migrants from the Mediterranean.

What has this to do with Putin? It portends fulfillment of his aspiration for Europe's political, social and moral disorientation.

The Financial Times reports that of the 138,000 migrants who have come by sea to Italy this year, few are from Syria. The "vast majority" are from Africa, with the largest number from Nigeria.

The U.N.'s World Population Prospects says that only 10 percent of global population is in Europe, which is projected to have fewer people in 2050 than today. Just 16 percent of the world's population is in Africa but "more than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur" there. It will have the world's highest growth rate, and 41 percent of its people currently are under 15. Of the nine countries expected to experience half the world's population growth by 2050, five are in Africa (Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda). Nigeria's population, currently the world's seventh largest, is the most rapidly growing.

Even without what is likely — population pressures producing some failed African states — a portion of Africa's multitudes, perhaps scores of millions of migrants, might cross the Mediterranean to Europe. There, 24 percent of the people are 60 and over, and no country has a birth rate sufficient to maintain current population sizes. Who but immigrants can work and fund Europe's welfare states for its graying publics?

Europe has recently been politically destabilized and socially convulsed by the arrival of a million Syrian migrants seeking asylum. Future migrations from Africa, with a large Muslim component, could pose the greatest threat to the social cohesion of Europe since 1945, or even since invading Arab forces were halted at Poitiers in 732.

Undermining the West's confident sense of itself is important to Putin's implementation of his ideology of Eurasianism. It holds that Russia's security and greatness depend on what Ben Judah calls a "geographically ordained empire" that "looks east to Tashkent, not west to Paris."

Writing in the British journal Standpoint, Judah reports that Russian television relentlessly presents "a dangerous, angry wonderland": "Russia is special, Russia is under attack, Russia swarms with traitors, Russia was betrayed in 1991, Russia was glorious under Stalin's steady hand." This justifies gigantic military, intelligence and police establishments steeped in Eurasianist tracts published by the Russian General Staff.

Putin's Russia, writes Owen Matthews in The Spectator, is developing a "state-sponsored culture of prudery" to make it a "moral fortress" against Western decadence. The Russian Orthodox Church benefits from a 2013 law that criminalizes "offending the feelings of religious believers." Twenty-one percent of Russians want homosexuals "liquidated" and another 37 percent favor "separating them from society."

In a new collection of essays, "Authoritarianism Goes Global" (Johns Hopkins), the Brookings Institution's Lilia Shevtsova says Putin is simultaneously imposing a domestic revolution of cultural conservatism, converting Russia into a revanchist power and "forging an anti-Western International." She warns:

"Ever since Stalinism's relentless assault on all 'horizontal' ties (even those of family), Russians have been tragically at the mercy of the state and its claims: Individuals are invited to compensate for their helplessness by looking for meaning in collective national 'successes' that promise to bring them together and restore their pride." Such as the annexation of Crimea.

In the same volume, Peter Pomerantsev, a student of 21st-century propaganda, says "the underlying goal" of Putin's domestic disinformation is less to persuade than "to engender cynicism": "When people stop trusting any institutions or having any firmly held values, they can easily accept a conspiratorial vision of the world." Putin's Kremlin is weaving a web of incongruous but useful strands. Its conservative nationalism is congruent with that of rising European factions on the right. Its anti-Western, especially anti-American, message resonates with the European left. It funds European green groups whose opposition to fracking serves Putin's agenda of keeping Europe dependent on Russian gas.

In many worrisome ways, the 1930s are being reprised. In Europe, Russia is playing the role of Germany in fomenting anti-democratic factions. In inward-turning, distracted America, the role of Charles Lindbergh is played by a presidential candidate smitten by Putin and too ignorant to know the pedigree of his slogan "America First."

George Will writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. His email is georgewill@washpost.com.</s>The next U.S. administration will inherit the worst relationship with Russia since Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire. Judging from the list of grievances that President Vladimir Putin has laid out, even a relatively Putin-friendly Donald Trump will have a hard time satisfying him.

Putin delivered his message to the future U.S. president last week, just as the U.S. State Department announced it was suspending negotiations with Russia on a cease-fire in Syria and Russia-backed Syrian troops moved to take more ground in Aleppo. In a bill submitted to the parliament, Putin threatened to end a joint U.S.-Russian disarmament program — in which surplus weapons-grade plutonium is processed into fuel — unless the United States meets certain conditions:

Roll back NATO infrastructure and reduce its personnel to September 2000 levels.

Repeal the Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on Russian officials involved in human rights violations.

Repeal all U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals and businesses.

Compensate Russians for damages incurred by U.S. sanctions and by Russia’s “forced countersanctions.”

Present a “clear plan of irreversible destruction” of U.S. surplus plutonium.

Putin might as well have said the program will resume when hell freezes over. “He asked for too little,” Leonid Volkov, an anti-Putin politician, wrote sarcastically on Facebook. “He should have asked for Alaska back, eternal youth, Elon Musk and a ticket to Disneyland.”

Even if a U.S. administration were suddenly prepared to lift sanctions introduced in response to the Russian aggression in Ukraine, not even a President Trump would agree to the humiliating and nonsensical demand for compensation — particularly for Russia’s spiteful decision to ban Western food imports, a move that primarily hurt domestic consumers. The NATO cuts, too, are a nonstarter.

The plutonium deal was largely symbolic and on its last legs anyway. It applied to just 34 tons on each side, a small share of each country’s nuclear arsenal. The Obama administration put its side of the program “on cold standby” in 2014, after a series of disagreements over such issues as how to dispose of the plutonium and the high cost of converting it into fuel for nuclear plants. The move indicated that the U.S. was prepared to see Russia abandon its side of the bargain, too.

Putin’s choice of venue appears aimed at reminding the world that Russia remains a nuclear power with plutonium to spare, unlike most countries in its immediate neighborhood. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko bitterly regrets that his country gave up its nuclear arsenal in the mid-1990s in exchange for a now-worthless guarantee from Russia, the U.S. and the United Kingdom that it wouldn’t be attacked. Poroshenko wants to convince Washington that Ukraine deserves lethal U.S. weapons, having been duped into stripping itself of a powerful deterrent that probably would have kept it intact in 2014.

Putin’s message is that Russia will start acting as an equal, whether or not the U.S. wants to treat it as one. It’s a reminder to the presidential candidates that pacifying Russia will have a price tag, and that Russia’s starting position in any negotiations will be arrogantly high. Since the outgoing U.S. administration is unlikely to step up military activity in Syria, Russia is doing its best to make sure President Bashar Assad’s troops win a decisive victory at Aleppo before the next U.S. president is inaugurated. The U.S. decision to withdraw from talks means little to Putin, who has been playing for time rather than talking anyway.

Putin is aware that his belligerent stand will be costly. Last week, the Finance Ministry suggested boosting the classified part of the budget — which includes military and security expenditures — by about 680 billion rubles ($10.9 billion), a move that will require cutting other expenditures and increasing the deficit. Putin knows from experience that Russians will put up with more economic hardship if they feel he is standing up to the U.S.

It’s hard to see how Barack Obama can respond seriously to Putin’s demands. The next U.S. president, though, will need to decide what to do with an intransigent Russia. One option is to ratchet up sanctions and wait for a weakening economy to undermine the Kremlin’s position, yet such an approach could have immediate and unpredictable consequences in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Russian writer Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.
Russian President Vladimir Putin deploys the nuclear-capable Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system to the Russian Kaliningrad exclave between Poland and Lithuania.