Russian Warning On A-Mine Belt

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30680, 20 February 1965, Page 19

Russian Warning On A-Mine Belt

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter—Copyright; MOSCOW, February 19. Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, former Soviet chief of general staff, has commented on an American proposal to lay nuclear mines along West Germany’s frontiers with East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The danger of such a scheme was accidental explosion, which would “involve a series of explosions according to the laws of detonation,” he said.

Thia would automatically result in retaliation by Soviet nudecr rockets. “In contemporary conditions one cannot wait. There will be a desert within a few hours in the territory of West Germany,” he said. Marshal Sokolovsky said published figures indicated the total power of the world’s nuclear devices was between 250,000 and 400,000 megatons.

He suggested correspondents subtract the total of W’estern nuclear power from this to find the total Soviet nuclear power. Marshal Sokolovsky was also asked about the number of Soviet nuclear submarines. He replied: “The difference may be one or two boats.” The Soviet Union saw no sense in putting nuclear weapons in orbit, because its land-based ones gave enough striking power. Soviet rockets had unlimited range, because large spaceships were placed in orbit by the same rockets as were used to carry nuclear warheads, he said.

Marshal Sokolovsky gave the size of the Soviet armed forces as 2,423,000 men, but he said some manpower reduction was possible in the future. He also said “we shall gladly withdraw our troops from the territory of Hungary, Poland, the G.D.R. (East Germany) if the Western powers announce their intention to follow our example.”