New early-warning radar

Moscow said it would have a new early-warning radar up by the end of the year to replace the station in Skrunda, Latvia, which Russia turned over to Latvia last year. The radar will be in Baranovichi, in neighboring Belarus. Russia has said the lack of a radar in the region has left its western flank vulnerable. Western experts also have expressed concern that a weakened air defense system increased the chances of dangerous false nuclear-attack alarm. Russia handed control of Skrunda over to Latvia on October 21, 1999, formally ending its resented, half-century military presence in the Baltic states. From 1971 until the radar was switched off, Skrunda was a key component in Russia’s air-defense network, responsible for scanning the western skies for any incoming missiles. In the years after the Baltic states regained independence in 1991, virtually all Russia’s bases were abandoned and its troops withdrawn. But as part of a its pullout treaty with Moscow and at the urging of Western governments, Latvia grudgingly agreed in 1994 to let Russia operate the Skrunda radar for four more years. Russia switched the radar off in 1998, then had 18 months more to dismantle it.