Vladimir Putin announced plans for the nuclear deployment on 25 March. (File)
Moscow:
Russia moved forward on Thursday with plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, whose leader said in the Kremlin the first deployment of such bombs outside Russia since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
President Vladimir Putin says the United States and its allies are fighting an escalating proxy war against Russia since the Kremlin chief sent troops into Ukraine in February last year.
On 25 March, Vladimir Putin announced plans for a nuclear deployment in an interview with state television.
“The collective West is essentially waging an undeclared war against our countries,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Putin in a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart in Minsk, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Mr Shoigu said the West was doing everything it could “to prolong and escalate the armed conflict in Ukraine”.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said that strategic nuclear weapons were already moving after Vladimir Putin signed an order, although there was no confirmation from the Kremlin.
“The movement of nuclear weapons has already begun,” President Lukashenko told reporters. Asked whether the weapons were already in Belarus, he said: “Possibly. I’ll check when I get back.”
Mr. Shoigu said that the documents he is signing in Minsk relate to the process of storing strategic nuclear weapons in a special facility in Belarus.
President Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than any other country, will use all means to defend itself, and has called the Ukraine war a threat to Russia’s existence against an aggressive West. placed in the form of a battle.
The United States and its allies say they want Ukraine to defeat Russian forces on the battlefield but deny they want to destroy Russia – and deny the Ukraine war is in any way a threat to NATO. linked to post-Soviet expansion.
It is still unclear when Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be deployed in Belarus, which borders three NATO members – Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Russia will have control over weapons.
Tactical nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons used for specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, and are usually smaller in yield than strategic nuclear weapons designed to destroy the largest cities of the United States or Russia. .
Russia has a large numerical superiority over the United States and the NATO military alliance when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons: the United States believes Russia has about 2,000 such functional tactical warheads.
The United States has about 200 such tactical nuclear weapons, half of which are located in Europe. These 12-ft B61 nuclear warheads, with varying capacities from 0.3 to 170 kilotons, are deployed at six air bases in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Mr Shoigu said Iskander-M missiles, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, had been handed over to the Belarusian Armed Forces, and some Sukhoi-25 aircraft had been converted for possible use with nuclear weapons.
“Belarusian troops have received the necessary training,” his ministry quoted Sergei Shoigu as saying. He said that both countries can take more measures to ensure their security.
Shoigu said, “NATO’s military activities have become as aggressive as possible.
The United States has said the world faces the most serious nuclear threat since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis because of Vladimir Putin’s comments during the Ukraine conflict, but Moscow says its position has been misinterpreted. .
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed by the Soviet Union, states that no nuclear power may transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a non-nuclear power, but it allows the weapons to be deployed outside its borders but its under its control.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)