WASHINGTON, September 29. /TASS/. Any American would agree that the situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis must not be repeated, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said in an article published on the website of the US’ National Interest magazine on Wednesday.
The Russian diplomat recalled that this October "will mark sixty years since the Cuban Missile Crisis when the USSR and the United States were on the verge of a nuclear conflict." "This is an occasion to look closer at the foreign policy lessons that the two great powers have learned from that dramatic time. I believe that any American will see eye-to-eye with me that we must not allow the explosive situation of the 1960s to repeat," he noted.
"It is important that not only Russia and the United States, but also other nuclear states, confirmed in a common statement that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," he stressed, adding that "the U.S. media is abounding in publications by pseudo-experts who are ignorant of history and misinterpret the current state of affairs. They erroneously compare today’s situation with the Cuban Missile Crisis."
In the secret operation Anadyr in the summer of 1962, the former Soviet Union deployed ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads to them to Cuba, an island located some 200 kilometers off the US coast. The 51st missile division with a personnel of more than 40,000 was deployed in September-October 1962. After the Soviet missiles were spotted by US intelligence services in October, relations between the two superpowers came to the brink of a nuclear confrontation. The 13-day standoff came down in history as the Cuban Missile Crisis.