The Kremlin sees military threats in many places around the world these weeks, and the government of Russia has regularly justified troop deployment on the border with Ukraine.

Sometimes NATO exercises "on Russian borders" worry Moscow, sometimes missile defense systems in Romania and Poland.

Then again Moscow complains about the presence of Western warships in the Black Sea or about the NATO battalions in the Baltic states.

A few days ago, however, the Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov pointed to a place that hardly anyone on the world map of the supposed threats had on their screen: Mainz-Kastel.

Lorenz Hemicker

Editor in politics

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What the Americans are currently doing in the district of the Hessian state capital Wiesbaden, Rjabkow indicated, was one of several "indirect signs" that NATO was preparing to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe.

The West last achieved this at the height of the East-West conflict at the time.

However, Ryabkov did not say that the decision of the West at the time was a reaction to the stationing of corresponding Soviet systems west of the Urals.

Nonetheless, Russia now feels compelled to station medium-range missiles in Europe for its part.

What's behind the comeback?

Since the end of the East-West conflict, NATO has no longer maintained medium-range missiles in Europe. It also repeats again and again to Russia that none of its members want to station land-based nuclear missiles in Europe. And yet: The decision of the Americans to deploy, on which Ryabkov is referring, still makes people sit up and take notice. So far it has hardly been discussed in Berlin, let alone noticed in public. On November 8th of this year, the headquarters of the American land forces in Europe and Africa reactivated the 56th Artillery Command with a ceremony in the Lucius D. Clay barracks.

Strictly speaking, a large part of the barracks is in the Wiesbaden district of Erbenheim, which borders directly on Mainz-Kastel. And it is not an arbitrary unit that is stationed there. Between 1986 and 1991, the command led the nuclear medium-range missiles of the "Pershing II" type, about which there was bitter political dispute in West Germany at the time. So what's behind this comeback?

The British tabloid "The Sun" was quick to be sure, as is so often the case. For the opening of the artillery command, it simulated a graphic of a nuclear strike from Mainz-Kastel on Moscow. The Russian capital was absorbed in a mushroom cloud. In Germany, interest was limited to the local press. Only the Armed Forces Commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), who involuntarily left office last year, devoted himself to the command in more detail in an article for the media portal The Pioneer.

He, too, was convinced that it would again serve as a nuclear deterrent, as it had before.

Nobody else in Berlin said anything about it.

And neither did the American land forces in the Rhine-Main area.

A visit to the artillery command, it was said from army circles, was not possible - at least not during these times when the Kremlin was pointing a finger at Mainz-Kastel.

No short-term response to the Ukraine crisis

What does the American government intend to do with the artillery command?

In any case, reactivation is not a short-term reaction to the recent crisis in Ukraine.

Commonly, such considerations in Washington run for years between the Pentagon, governments and the Senate.

The plans became public in April.

At that time, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced on his inaugural visit to Berlin that a new military unit would be sent to Germany to target distant targets.