The deployment announced in March by Russia will take place. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, June 16, that he had transferred nuclear weapons to Belarus. “The first nuclear warheads were delivered to the territory of Belarus. These are just the first, by the end of the summer, the end of the year, we will totally, fully complete this work,” he told an economic forum in St. Petersburg, broadcast live on Russian television, reports AFP, which was unable to attend.
Putin recalled that the “deployment of tactical nuclear weapons” to Belarus was the result of an agreement announced in March with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who loaned his country’s territory to Russia to attack Ukraine.
The Russian president announced as early as March 25 that Moscow would deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, a country located on the doorstep of the European Union, fueling fears of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. The announcement had sparked criticism from the international community, Westerners in particular, especially since the Russian leader has, since the start of his assault on his Ukrainian neighbor in February 2022, raised the possibility of recourse to atomic weapon.
So-called “tactical” nuclear weapons can cause immense damage, but their radius of destruction is more limited than that of “strategic” nuclear weapons. In early April, Russia said it had started training the Belarusian military in the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons. In addition, Putin has previously indicated that ten aircraft have already been equipped in Belarus for the use of such weapons and that a special warehouse will be completed by July 1.
