Belarus will use nuclear weapons deployed by Russia in the country in the event of an attack, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko warned on Tuesday.
“God forbid that I have to make the decision to use these weapons. But I will not hesitate if we are attacked,” Lukashenko said during a visit to the Minsk region, quoted by the Belarusian news agency Belta.
Lukashenko, Moscow’s main ally in the war against Ukraine, said the soon-to-be stationed Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus were needed “so that not a single bastard foot will ever set foot on Belarusian soil again.”
If Belarus were hit, “the response will be immediate,” Lukashenko said, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
Lukashenko considered it “unlikely that anyone would want to declare war on a country that possesses” nuclear weapons.
“These are the weapons of the superpowers,” he added.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of neighboring Belarus starting July 8.
The arms transfer had been the subject of an agreement between Moscow and Minsk in March. Russia invaded Ukraine to “demilitarize and denazify” the neighboring country, according to the objectives announced by Putin on the day the operation began, February 24, 2022.
The conflict plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
The number of civilian and military casualties is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that it will be high.
Ukraine has relied on the support of Western allies, which supply kyiv with weapons to fight Russian troops.
The West has also imposed economic sanctions on Russia to try to lessen its ability to finance the war effort.
At the end of September, Putin decreed the annexation of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to the territory of the Russian Federation, after having done the same with Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine and the international community in general do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five annexed regions.
kyiv demanded the Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory as one of the preconditions for eventual peace talks, but Moscow responded that Ukrainians must accept the new reality.
Source: TSF
