You're reading: Los Angeles Times: Russia says it has a right to put nuclear weapons in Crimea

Russia has the right to deploy nuclear weapons in the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in March, a top Russian official said on Dec. 15. "Crimea was not a non-nuclear zone in an international law sense but was part of Ukraine, a state which doesn't possess nuclear arms," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Interfax news agency. 

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