The message is launched. Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Saturday to use depleted uranium shells in Ukraine if kyiv were to receive them from Westerners, as recently mentioned by a British official.
“Russia, of course, has something to answer for. We have, without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of such shells. We don’t use them at the moment,” Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Russian TV.
London’s willingness to send depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine prompted Vladimir Putin to step up his defenses. During this interview, he clarified that Moscow was going to deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons on the territory of its ally, Belarus, a country located on the doorstep of the European Union. Russian officials have repeatedly issued thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if the conflict escalates significantly. Ruled since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus borders Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania.
“There is nothing unusual here: the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies.” “We agreed to do the same,” he added, saying he had the Minsk agreement.
“We have already helped our Belarusian colleagues and equipped their planes […] without violating our international commitments on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Ten planes are ready to use this type of weapon,” the Russian leader continued. “As of April 3, we start training the crews. And on July 1, we will complete the construction of a special warehouse for tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. »
During recent negotiations in Moscow between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two leaders had stated in a joint statement that a nuclear war “must never be started”, because “there can be no winners”. Several Russian officials, including former President Dmitry Medvedev, have however threatened Ukraine and Westerners with nuclear weapons since the start of the Russian offensive launched on February 24, 2022.
Russia also suspended last month the important New Start nuclear disarmament treaty signed with the United States, although it promised to respect the limitation of its nuclear arsenal until the effective end of this agreement on 5 February 2026. Last year Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of wanting to equip itself with a “dirty bomb”, a weapon made up of conventional explosives surrounded by radioactive materials intended to be scattered into dust at the time of the explosion.
Ukraine and its Western allies had condemned these allegations and accused Russia of playing nuclear escalation. Russian nuclear doctrine does not provide for the preventive use by Russia of nuclear weapons, but only in response to an attack on it or its allies, or in the event of a “threat to the very existence of the state”.
Consult our file: War in Ukraine
