Jakarta –
Ukraine responded about Russia’s move to deploy weapons nuclear his tactics to Belarus. Ukraine says Putin has turned Belarus into a “nuclear hostage”.
“The Kremlin is holding Belarus a nuclear hostage,” the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter.
He added that Putin’s move was a “step towards destabilizing the country”.
Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Belarus had agreed to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is said to be key to this deal.
This is the first time Russia has positioned tactical nuclear weapons abroad since the mid-1990s. Tactical nuclear weapons refer to weapons used to achieve a certain advantage on the battlefield, not weapons that have the capacity to obliterate cities but it’s unclear how many such weapons Russia has.
“There is nothing out of the ordinary. The US has been doing something like this for decades. They are deploying their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies,” Putin said in a televised broadcast as reported by Reuters.
“We are doing the same without violating our obligations. I emphasize, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,” Putin added.
The process of transferring weapons from Russia to Belarus was not mentioned in detail. However, as is well known, Belarus is one of the countries that are allies of Russia. Interestingly, Belarus shares borders with 3 NATO members namely Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Regarding this news, the US reacted quite cautiously. One senior US official said that his country had known about the agreement between Russia and Belarus since last year.
Also watch video: Biden: China Has Not Provided Weapons to Russia, Doesn’t Mean It Won’t
(dhn/zap)
