Russia announced it at the end of March, it is now done. Moscow has begun delivering nuclear warheads to Belarus, a loyal ally of Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday, at a time when the Russian army is in a delicate situation in Ukraine awaiting an imminent counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.
Lukashenko, who was in Moscow on Thursday for a regional summit, was unable to say whether the weapons in question were already in his country, but said his Russian counterpart had told him the day before that he had signed the decree allowing the transfer. Russia, for its part, had no immediate comment.
" READ ALSO "tactical" nuclear weapons: power, damage, strategy... Should the Russian threat be taken seriously?
Vladimir Putin announced on 25th March that Moscow would deploy "tactical" nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, a country also bordering Poland, Lithuania (and thus the European Union) and Ukraine, feeding the fear of an escalation of the ongoing conflict in the latter country.
'Radioactive fallout far worse than Chernobyl'
The announcement was loudly denounced by the international community, the West in particular, especially since the Russian leader has since the beginning of his assault on his Ukrainian neighbor in February 2022 evoked the possibility of using atomic weapons. Exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya denounced Thursday on Twitter a threat "for all of Europe".
Today, the #Belarus regime has signed an agreement with Russia on the deployment of nuclear weapons. It would not only endanger the lives of Belarusians but also create a new threat against Ukraine & all of Europe.
Even when they are talking about tactical nuclear weapons, most... pic.twitter.com/tKFpL5Oosj
— Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) May 25, 2023
"When we talk about tactical nuclear weapons, most are as powerful as the one that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima," she insisted, adding that "the radioactive fallout would be much worse than the contamination suffered by Belarusians after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986."
