MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/. Statements by a number of Western politicians, including Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk and French President Emmanuel Macron about the possibility of strikes with European and US weapons against targets in Russia, could lead to a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Igor Korotchenko, a military analyst and editor-in-chief of National Defense magazine, has told TASS.

On Wednesday, Poland's Deputy Minister of National Defense Cezary Tomczyk said on Radio Zet that the Polish authorities were okay with Ukraine using weapons supplied by Warsaw for strikes against facilities inside Russia. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for letting Kiev attack military facilities on Russian territory with Western weapons.

"This is a path to escalation. After Poland, obviously, the same decision, one way or another, will be made by other NATO countries. Generally speaking, the alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, is also calling for this. A number of other representatives of the alliance are doing the same. The way I see it, we are heading for a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The West has us barreling in this direction," Korotchenko said.

At the same time, the expert noted, to ensure its security Russia needs to expand preparations for the possible use of nuclear weapons and slightly amend its nuclear doctrine.

"The Western elites are now coming to realize that they have a unique historical opportunity to somehow do away with the Russian issue by disintegrating and destroying our statehood. The stakes in this game are high: the future of Russia," Korotchenko concluded.

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 16, 1962, a sharp military and political confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States flared up, colloquially referred to as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was one of the most acute international standoffs of the Cold War period, when the two superpowers were just one step away from nuclear war. The crisis erupted after Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles and military personnel were deployed to Cuba in retaliation to the US placing missiles in Turkey, after which the US threatened to invade Cuba.

As a result of negotiations, the Soviet Union pledged to withdraw all but conventional weapons from Cuba. The US guaranteed non-interference in Cuba's internal affairs and respect for its territorial inviolability. It was decided to make this part of the deal public. As for American missiles in Turkey, it was secretly agreed that they would be removed in the next four or five months after formal coordination with Turkey and NATO.