Rosatom Chief issues Russia nuclear weapons warning: ‘Colossal threats’

Russia is facing “colossal threats” that mean it must continuously improve its nuclear weapons “shield,” the chief of the state atomic energy agency warned.

“Now, in the current geopolitical moment, it is a time of colossal threats to the existence of our country,” said Alexey Likhachev, director of Rosatom, on Thursday, August 21, Russian state news agency RIA reported.

“Therefore, the nuclear shield—it is also the sword—is a guarantee of our sovereignty […] Today we understand that the nuclear shield in the coming years must only be improved,” Likhachev said, originally in Russian.

Nuclear tensions between Russia and the U.S.-led defensive alliance NATO have heightened during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and has in recent years modernized it to include hypersonic missiles, which Moscow claims can penetrate current Western air defense systems.

The U.S. is developing a new space-based missile defense shield that President Donald Trump has called the “Golden Dome”.

Meanwhile, two German fighter jets were deployed from Romania overnight amid a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine that struck Danube River port infrastructure in Izmail near the NATO frontier.

The German Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, stationed at Romania’s Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base as part of NATO’s Enhanced Air Policing mission, were scrambled to monitor the situation in the border area with Ukraine, particularly northern Tulcea County, according to Romania’s Ministry of National Defense.

Why It Matters

The incident highlights the continuing volatility near NATO’s eastern border as Russia intensifies aerial attacks on Ukraine’s grain-exporting ports along the Danube. These facilities are crucial to Kyiv’s economy and have become regular targets of Russian strikes.

The port of Izmail, which lies across the river from the city of Tulcea, is clearly visible from higher ground in the Romanian city, underlining the proximity of the strikes to NATO territory.