Belarus will welcome Russian tactical nuclear weapons in response to unprecedented Western pressure, the Belarusian foreign ministry announced on Tuesday.
“For two and a half years, Belarus has been under unprecedented pressure from the United States, Great Britain and their allies,” Belarusian diplomacy said in a statement quoted by the French agency AFP.
For Minsk, it is “direct and gross interference” in the internal affairs of Belarus, a former Soviet republic allied with Russia in the war against Ukraine.
The economic and political sanctions against Belarus are accompanied by the “strengthening of NATO’s military potential” in the territory of the Alliance’s neighbors, according to the Minsk government.
In this context, Belarus is being “forced to take countermeasures”, Belarusian diplomacy justified, in response to Western criticism of the announcement that Russia will hand over tactical nuclear weapons to the neighboring country.
The measure was announced on Saturday by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Preparations for the transfer of arms will begin on April 3, according to Putin.
In the statement released today, the The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has said that Minsk will not control Russian nuclear weapons.
He also argued that their transfer does not violate the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Putin’s announcement drew severe criticism from the West, with NATO (the acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) denouncing “Russia’s dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric”.
The European Union (EU) threatened Belarus with new sanctions if it agreed to accept Russian nuclear weapons.
The United States also condemned the move, but reiterated that it had no reason to believe that Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons.
Although Belarus is not directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine, Moscow used its territory to carry out its offensive in Kiev, which began on February 24, 2022.
Led by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, the EU’s neighbor is linked to Moscow by a treaty establishing the Union of the Russian Federation and Belarus.
The treaty, which updated a 1997 agreement, was signed on December 8, 1999 by Putin and Lukashenko.
Putin and other Russian leaders have repeatedly made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if the conflict escalates significantly.
Tactical nuclear weapons can be more than three times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.
Russia has the capacity to launch these types of weapons from ships, aircraft and ground forces, with a range of up to 500 kilometers.
This weapon is considered more destructive than a conventional warhead, although it has the same explosive energy and creates radiation pollution that affects the air, soil, water and food chain.
Source: DN
