Russia will start delivering very powerful tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko has said.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has not deployed any such warheads outside of Russia. These are nuclear weapons with a shorter range and lower strength that may be used in combat.
Lukashenko said, “We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia,” in an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel that was published on the Telegram channel of the Belarusian Belta state news agency.
He was standing on a road in the middle of a woodland clearing, saying, “The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Military trucks were parked nearby, and some sort of military storage facility could be seen in the distance.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, announced last Friday that after specific storage facilities for the tactical nuclear weapons were prepared, Russia, which will retain control of them, will begin deploying them in Belarus.
The Russian president pointed to the United States’ decades-long deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in a number of European nations when he revealed in March that he had agreed to station them in Belarus.
Although it has attacked Putin’s decision, the United States has stated that it will not change its own position on strategic nuclear weapons and that it has not observed any indications that Russia is getting ready to use a nuclear weapon.
Nevertheless, the United States and its allies, as well as China, which has consistently warned against the utilisation of nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine, are keenly monitoring the Russian move.
Many nuclear storage facilities in Belarus
In the interview, which was broadcast on Russian state television, Lukashenko, a strong supporter of Putin, stated that his nation had many nuclear storage facilities left over from the Soviet era and had refurbished five or six of them.
He had previously stated separately earlier on Tuesday that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be physically deployed on Belarusian soil “in several days” and that he possessed the infrastructure to host longer-range missiles as well, should the necessity arise.
The deployment of nuclear weapons will serve as deterrence against possible aggressors, according to Lukashenko, who has let his nation to be exploited by Russian forces assaulting Ukraine as part of what Moscow refers to as its “special military operation”.
Three NATO members, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, border Belarus.
Lukashenko claimed, “We have always been a target. They (the West) have wanted to tear us to pieces since 2020. No one has so far fought against a nuclear country, a country that has nuclear weapons.”
Following the outbreak of large-scale protests against his rule in 2020 following a presidential election the opposition said he had won unlawfully, Lukashenko has often charged that the West is attempting to depose him. While launching a broad offensive against his rivals, Lukashenko claimed that he had won in a fair contest.
