Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has announced that his nation has begun receiving a shipment of tactical nuclear weapons from Russia. He said that some of them were three times as powerful as the bombs launched by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this is the first time Moscow has moved such warheads outside of Russia.
Lukashenko remarked, "We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia," in an interview on Tuesday, June 13, with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel. According to Reuters, it was shared on the Telegram account of the Belarusian Belta state news agency.
During the interview, military trucks parked nearby can be seen in the background, as well as some kind of military storage facility in the distance.
In Response to Decades of US Deployment in European Nations
Following the completion of the necessary preparations for the storage of the tactical nuclear weapons, Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced last week that Russia would begin deploying them in Belarus.
After hearing about the US' delivery of tactical nuclear weapons to a number of European countries over the course of several decades, the Russian leader declared in March that he had decided to deploy such weapons to Belarus.
Although it has condemned Putin's move, the US has insisted that it has no plans to change its own position on strategic nuclear weapons and that it has seen no indications that Russia is ready to use a nuclear weapon.
The US and its allies are keeping a close watch on Russia's move, but China is particularly concerned about the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine.
Belarus Asserts They Have Always Been a Target
In the interview broadcast, Putin's close ally Lukashenko said that Belarus had reactivated five or six of its nuclear storage sites from the Soviet period.
He denied that Russian ownership of the weapons would prevent him from deploying them fast if required, saying he and Putin could call one other at any moment.
Earlier on Tuesday, Reuters said that he made a separate statement in which he declared that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons would be physically installed on Belarusian land in several days and that he had the infrastructure to host longer-range missiles.
Lukashenko claims that nuclear deployment would serve as a deterrence against possible aggressors. Ironically, Russia has been using Belarus as a launching pad for its invasion of Ukraine.
Europe's longest-serving leader, Lukashenko, said he did not just ask Putin for the weaponry but demanded they be given to him.
"We have always been a target. They [the West] have wanted to tear us to pieces since 2020. No one has so far fought against a nuclear country, a country that has nuclear weapons," the Belarusian president stated.
After large rallies against his authority in 2020, Lukashenko accused the West of attempting to overthrow him. While persecuting his opponents, Lukashenko claimed victory.
