Belarusian President Oleksandr Lukashenko said on Thursday that Russia had begun transferring nuclear weapons to his country, completing the nuclear weapons deployment announced by Vladimir Putin in March, AFP reported.
Russia has not yet commented.
“The transfer of nuclear warheads has already begun,” Lukashenko said in response to a Russian journalist’s question in a video broadcast by the Belarusian president’s unofficial Telegram channel “Pul Pervo.”
Lukashenko, who was in Moscow on Thursday for a regional summit, could not say whether the mentioned weapons are already in his country.
“Maybe I’ll come back and take a look,” said the Belarusian leader and Russia’s main ally.
Lukashenko explained that Putin had informed him the day before that he had signed a decree authorizing the transfer.
On March 25, the Russian president announced that Moscow would deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons in Belarus, a country bordering the European Union, fueling fears of an escalating conflict in Ukraine.
This statement drew criticism from the international community, especially in the West, especially since the Russian leader has been raising the possibility of using nuclear weapons since the beginning of his attack on his Ukrainian neighbor in February 2022.
On Thursday, the exiled opposition of Svitalan Tikhanovskaya condemned it as a threat to the entire European continent.
“This not only endangers the lives of Belarusians, it creates a new threat for Ukraine, for the whole of Europe,” wrote Svitlana Tikhanovskaya on Twitter.
“When it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, most of them are as powerful as the one that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima,” she added.
So-called “tactical” nuclear weapons can cause enormous damage, but their range is more limited than that of “strategic” nuclear weapons.
In early April, Russia announced that it had begun training the Belarusian military in the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons.
Earlier, Putin also stated that Belarus has already equipped ten aircraft for the use of such weapons, and a special warehouse will be completed by July 1.
Belarus is not directly involved in Ukraine, but has given its territory to the Russian military so they can launch an assault in February 2022.
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Source: Hot News
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