Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this Saturday his intention to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a country that borders Ukraine and has three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Putin stated that the move did not violate non-proliferation treaties and that the weapons would remain under Moscow’s control at all times.
The announcement comes a month after the Kremlin’s decision to suspend its participation in the recent bilateral deal with Washington on nuclear arms control, the New Start. This limits the use of strategic nuclear weapons, which have greater potential and range than tactical ones. In the face of this announcement by the Russian President, the United States reacted cautiously. A statement by the Defense Ministry on Saturday night emphasized that there was no indication that Moscow intends to use its nuclear weapons.
“There’s nothing unusual about that. First, the US has been doing this for decades,” the president said. Washington has deployed tactical bombs on bases in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands. “We agreed [con Bielorrusia] that we will do the same without violating our commitments, I emphasize without violating our commitments to nuclear non-proliferation.”
“We have already helped our Belarusian colleagues convert their aircraft. Ten planes are ready to use this type of weapon,” Putin said late last night on the Rossiya 24 channel. “We also delivered to Belarus our well-known and very effective Iskander missile system, which can also be a carrier [de ojivas nucleares]’ added the Russian leader. The icing on the cake was the announcement of the construction of a dedicated storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons, due to be completed on July 1st.
European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell reiterated in an interview with Efe in Santo Domingo this Saturday that the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus represents a “further escalation of the conflict”. For his part, a senior US official quoted by Portal said that Russia and Belarus had been discussing such a deal for the past year and that Washington saw no signs that Moscow was planning to use its nuclear weapons.
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“We have seen no reason to adjust our strategic nuclear stance and no indication that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon. We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance,” added the statement from the US Department of Defense press office.
Huge but limited power
Putin stressed that this dangerous movement of figures only considers tactical nuclear weapons, the destructive power of which, being enormous, is more limited. Tactical weapons are less powerful and more powerful than strategic weapons that can cross oceans and destroy entire cities. The tactic has a power of between 1 and 50 kilotons, although the US, and it is reasonable to assume that Russia also has equipment of around 0.3 kilotons (300 tons of TNT) capable of a comparable explosion to the to cause from Port of Beirut (Lebanon) in August 2020. Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 had a strength of 15 kilotons.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has about 2,000 of these weapons compared to about 200 in the United States, half in Europe, and that it began dismantling them after the Cold War, considering them obsolete and as risk. “What begins with a tactical nuclear attack or a nuclear exchange between two countries can escalate into an all-out nuclear war, ending in the immediate and total destruction of both nations,” warns François Diaz-Maurin, an expert at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in his Essay Nowhere to Hide: How Nuclear War Can Kill You and Almost Everybody.
The Russian nuclear use was an increasingly obvious step for some time. The Belarusian president paved the way when he held his pseudo-constitutional referendum on February 27, 2022, just three days after Russia began invading Ukraine. Changes approved by Minsk included greater legal protections for the president and the ability to transfer nuclear weapons from his ally to his territory.
“Aleksandr Grigorievich Lukashenko has long raised the issue of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus,” Putin said, using the recent announcement of British shipments of depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine to heighten his nuclear threat. This type of projectile does not have massive destructive power, but its materials have high toxicity.
“Everything that the President of Belarus asked for, all the issues he raised in this regard are being implemented, and all our agreements will be executed in the very near future,” Putin added. The armies of both countries held joint military exercises in Belarus five days before the Feb. 19 invasion of Ukraine, in which the Russian nuclear deterrent forces took part. Months earlier, the Kremlin sent several strategic bombers to patrol its border with the EU under the pretense of the Middle East refugee crisis that Minsk has been fueling since 2021.
This nuclear escalation is raising tensions, particularly with Poland, one of the countries that has spearheaded the delivery of military aid to Ukraine and has been the target of Lukashenko’s furious attacks to justify sending Russian troops onto its territory.
The drift of events in the field of nuclear weapons is of widespread concern. US President Joe Biden warned last October that the world was experiencing its most dangerous moment since 1962. “Not since have we been confronted with the prospect of the apocalypse like we are now [la presidencia de] Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said the US President shortly after Putin had asserted that he would defend his conquests “by all means”.
But concerns are also reaching Beijing. Putin warned that during the joint press conference held by Russian President and Chinese President Xi Jinping after their summit in Moscow on Tuesday, April 21. At that meeting, the leader of Asian giant Putin signed a statement arguing that to avoid the race for weapons of mass destruction. “All states that possess nuclear weapons must not station them outside their territory and must withdraw those stationed abroad,” says a document that four days later seems like a dead letter in Putin’s footsteps: “There can be no winners in one there will be nuclear war and it should never be unleashed”.
The Kremlin’s announced use of tactical nuclear weapons, at the time it makes such a decision, cannot have been a consequence of the early delivery of depleted uranium munitions this week. But Putin noted that he has prepared another measure: “I must say that Russia, of course, has something to answer for. We have, without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these shells. We haven’t used them yet,” emphasized the head of state.
On the other hand, the Kremlin is preparing for a long war. “Russia’s military-industrial complex is growing very rapidly, at a rate that many did not expect,” Putin stressed, estimating that his country produces three times more ammunition than NATO members.
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