Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko has announced the signing of a decree that would allow Russia to deploy tactical, shorter-range nuclear weapons in the country.
Lukashenko’s statement stressed they were “non-strategic” nuclear weapons, so not longer-range and higher-yield bombs.
Speaking in Moscow, Lukashenko said that the movement of the weapons was already underway, after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the decree. But he did not make it clear whether any had arrived in Belarus.
The agreement allows Moscow to store warheads at a special facility in Belarus.
Russia would maintain control of the weapons, as per the deal, which formalizes an earlier agreement between the two state leaders and allies.
Previously in March, Putin announced the intention to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Both Moscow and Minsk justified the deal as a response to what they perceive as Western hostility, amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
“Deployment of nonstrategic nuclear weapons is an effective response to the aggressive policy of countries unfriendly to us,” the Associated Press news agency cited Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin as saying in Minsk during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu.
“In the context of an extremely sharp escalation of threats on the western borders of Russia and Belarus, a decision was made to take countermeasures in the military-nuclear sphere,” Shoigu added, according to AP.
Meanwhile, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya warned that Putin’s plan to station nuclear weapons in Belarus would “ensure Russia’s control over Belarus for years to come.”
“This will further jeopardize the security of Ukraine and all of Europe,” he told AP.
Last year, Minsk allowed Moscow to use its territory for launching attacks on Ukraine. Belarus borders Ukraine to the north and entering from Belarus created a far wider front than just using the Russian frontier to Ukraine’s east, also opening a front closer to the capital Kyiv.
