NATO has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for his “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric after he announced that Russia would station tactical nuclear arms in Belarus. Putin compared the move to the United States’ storage of such weapons in bases across Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. However, Western allies called this analogy “misleading”. Experts believe that any Russian strike would likely involve small-size battlefield weapons, described as “tactical”, as opposed to “strategic” high-powered long-range nuclear weapons. Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to counter Russia’s “nuclear blackmail”.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry has accused Russia of breaching its obligations and undermining the “nuclear disarmament architecture and the international security system in general”. It called on “all members of the international community to convey to the criminal Putin regime the categorical unacceptability of its latest nuclear provocations”. Susi Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons told Al Jazeera that Russia deploying nuclear weapons in Belarus could potentially lead to “extremely catastrophic consequences”. She added that it increases the risk of the use of nuclear weapons by adding more actors who might potentially have the ability to drop nuclear bombs, creating potential for chaos and miscommunication.
Putin said that the move to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus was “nothing unusual” and that the United States had been doing this for decades. He said that they have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies. Putin said he spoke to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and that they “agreed to do the same”. Russia will start training crews on April 3 and plans to finish the construction of a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons by July 1.
Germany said that the comparison was misleading. An official from Germany’s foreign office told AFP news agency that “the comparison made by President Putin to nuclear sharing in NATO is misleading and does not justify the step announced by Russia”. Experts said that Russia’s move was significant since it had until now been proud that unlike the US, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders. It may be the first time since the mid-1990s that it has done so.
Putin has previously said that nuclear tensions were “rising” globally but that Moscow would not deploy first. In February 2022, Belarus allowed the Kremlin to launch its invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory. Fears have since risen that Belarus may join its ally’s offensive, but President Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, said he would do so “only if attacked”.
On Sunday, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter that “the Kremlin took Belarus as a nuclear hostage”. He added that the move was “a step towards the internal destabilisation of the country”. Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak added “[Putin] admits that he is afraid of losing and all he can do is scare” people. The Russian leader said renewed discussions with Lukashenko on the issue were spurred by a UK official’s suggestion that depleted uranium weapons be sent to Ukraine. Russia has “what it needs to answer” if the West supplied Ukraine with such ammunition, he added. “Without exaggeration, we have hundreds of thousands of such shells. We have not used them yet.”