Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, marking the first time since the mid-1990s that Moscow will have based such arms outside the country.
Putin made the announcement at a time of growing tensions with the West over the Ukraine war and as some Russian commentators speculate about possible nuclear strikes.
“Tactical” nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains on the battlefield rather than those with the capacity to wipe out cities. It is unclear how many such weapons Russia has given it is an area still shrouded in Cold War secrecy.
Experts told Reuters the development was significant since Russia had until now been proud that, unlike the United States, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders.
The U.S. Department of Defense said it would continue to monitor the situation.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” it said in a statement.
Putin told state television that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in his country.
“There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries,” he said.
“We agreed that we will do the same – without violating our obligations, I emphasize, without violating our international obligations on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.”
Putin did not specify when the weapons would be transferred to Belarus, which has borders with three NATO members — Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
“This is part of Putin’s game to try to intimidate NATO … because there is no military utility from doing this in Belarus as Russia has so many of these weapons and forces inside Russia,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the…
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