EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell is warning Belarus against placing Russian nuclear weapons on its territory, saying the move could trigger new sanctions. It will be recalled that Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
- “Placing Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus would be an irresponsible escalation and a threat to European security.
- Belarus can stop it. This is their choice,” the head of European diplomacy said on Twitter on Sunday, according to The Guardian.
He added that the EU is “ready to respond with new sanctions.”
Russia has reached an agreement with neighboring Belarus to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on its territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, the official TASS news agency reported, citing Reuters and AFP.
Such a move would not violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Putin argued, noting that the United States has also placed nuclear weapons on the territory of European allies.
- “There is nothing unusual here: firstly, the US has been doing it for decades. They placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies a long time ago,” Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Russian television.
President of Belarus Oleksandr Lukashenko has long been raising the issue of deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland, Putin noted at the time.
Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow’s decision was motivated by London’s desire to send depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine.
The head of the Kremlin threatened that Russia may resort to this type of projectiles if Ukraine receives such ammunition.
- “Russia, of course, has something to answer for. We have, without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of such shells. We are not using them yet,” said the President of the Russian Federation.
Although the Kremlin has never publicly confirmed it, the West has long said Russia keeps nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad, its exclave on the Baltic Sea coast between NATO and European Union members Poland and Lithuania.
It would be the first time since the mid-1990s that Russia has stored such weapons outside the country.
Source: Hot News
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