Putin threatens to put nuclear arms in Belarus
Suggests tactical weapons could be there by summer
President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he would be able to position nuclear weapons in Belarus by the summer, a claim that analysts said was likely bluster but which underscored the Kremlin’s determination to use its vast nuclear arsenal to pressure the West to back down from its support of Ukraine.
Western officials condemned Putin’s remarks as irresponsible, even as they said that they saw no indication that Russia was making changes to how it deploys nuclear weapons.
Putin, in an interview released before its broadcast on Russian state television Sunday, provided new details of a plan that he first floated last year to base Russian weapons in Belarus, a close ally. He said that 10 Belarusian warplanes have already been retrofitted to carry Russian nuclear weapons, and that a storage facility for the warheads would be ready by July 1.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin said, insisting that his plan was no different from the US practice of positioning nuclear weapons in allied countries — an assertion that Western officials rejected.
The Russian leader has repeatedly raised the specter of using nuclear weapons since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. US officials say they have seen no effort by Russia to move or employ its nuclear weapons and believe the risk of their use is low, but worries have lingered.
It was not clear whether Putin would in fact transfer Russian nuclear weapons into Belarus, and in the interview Putin was vague on the timeline for such a move. Analysts also pointed out that even if Russia were to transfer some of its warheads, the action wouldn’t substantially change the nuclear threat posed by Russia since it can already target a vast range of territory from inside its own borders.
But Putin’s comments in the interview underlined his continuing efforts to unsettle Western officials — and Western public opinion — with the prospect that the war in Ukraine could escalate into a nuclear conflict. Putin said that the nuclear warheads Russia intended to position in Belarus were of the “tactical” variety, meaning that they would be meant for battlefield use and have lower explosive power than the “strategic” type that can threaten entire cities.
In response to Putin’s comments, a NATO spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, said Sunday that “we have not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own.” But she called Putin’s rhetoric “dangerous and irresponsible.”
Ukraine called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address “the latest provocation by the criminal Putin regime” and Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, said the bloc “stands ready to respond with further sanctions.”
John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the United States was watching the matter closely, but played down the potential for escalation.
“We’ve in fact seen no indication he has any intention to use nuclear weapons, period, inside Ukraine,” Kirby said.
Putin made the comments during a wide-ranging interview for a weekly state television show dedicated to the Russian president called “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin.”
In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko did not immediately respond to Putin’s comments. But they drew swift condemnation from Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, an exiled Belarusian opposition leader. She said the deployment “grossly contradicts the will of the Belarusian people to assume the non-nuclear state status expressed in the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Belarus of 1990,” and “directly violates the constitution.”