Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. This development came on Wednesday (June 14) and reports also noted that according to Lukashenko, some of the weapons were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the United States.
Experts have claimed that the shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons could potentially be used on the battlefield. In case it happens, it would be the first usage of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
During an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel, Lukashenko said, “We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia.”
“The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said in the interview, which was posted on the Belarusian Belta state news agency’s Telegram channel.
As per the report, Lukashenko spoke on a road in a forest clearing with military vehicles parked nearby. In the images, some kind of military storage facility was also visible in the background.
Earlier this year in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus amid the ongoing Ukraine war, which began when the Russian president ordered a “special military operation” last year in February.
The announcement was criticised by the US and other Western nations, but America said that it has no intention of altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons. It was also claimed that so far, there are no signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
The interview with the Russian state TV was reportedly released late on Tuesday, where Lukashenko said that his country had numerous nuclear storage facilities left over from the Soviet era. they had restored five or six of them.
Meanwhile, Lukashenko played down the idea that Russian control of the weapons was an impediment to using them quickly if he felt such a move was necessary. He said that he and Putin could pick up the phone to each other “at any moment”.
What will be the location of these weapons?
Neither Russia nor Belarus revealed the exact location where the “tactical” nuclear weapons would be deployed. But the Federation of American Scientists has said the weapons could be based at Lida air base, 40 km (25 miles) from the Lithuanian border. Notably, Belarus borders three NATO member countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
Disclaimer: A number of claims and counterclaims are being made on the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the ground and online. While WION takes utmost care to accurately report this developing news story, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.
(With inputs from agencies)
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