JABAR EKSPRES – President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia had delivered the first set of tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring ally Belarus, a move likely to raise tensions further with the West over the war in Ukraine.
It marks the first time Russia has unloaded nuclear weapons beyond its borders since it broke away from the former Soviet republics upon their collapse in 1991.
In remarks at an international economic forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that “nuclear warheads have been delivered to the territory of Belarus” and “this is the first delivery.”
“We will complete this work by the end of the year,” he added, emphasizing that the decision to deliver tactical nuclear weapons, designed for limited strikes on the battlefield, was a preventive measure.
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Belarus shares borders with NATO countries, including Poland, and has assisted Russia in its military aggression despite not directly taking part in the attack.
Asserting that Russia was victorious in the war against Ukraine, Putin, speaking through a translator, emphasized that while the use of nuclear weapons is “theoretically possible,” it is only necessary if “there is a threat to Russian sovereignty.”
The Russian president also criticized the United States for being the only country to use nuclear weapons to attack a country without nuclear weapons, referring to the use of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the last day of the Second World War.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Friday in Washington said he would “continue to watch the situation very closely” but added there was no indication that Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons.
“We have no reason to adjust our own nuclear posture,” he said.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally, said on Tuesday that his country began receiving shipments of Russian tactical nuclear weapons including some with a power three times greater than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan in 1945, according to Reuters.
