NATO has criticized Vladimir Putin for what it called his “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric after the Russian president announced his country would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Putin said on Saturday the deployment was similar to movements from the United States, which store such weapons in bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey — an analogy that Western allies called “misleading.”
With fears of nuclear war mounting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, experts believe any Russian attack is likely to involve small arms on the battlefield, described as “tactical”, as opposed to “strategic” weapons. powered long-range nuclear weapons.
Ukraine said it was seeking an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to counter Russia’s “nuclear blackmail”.
“Ukraine expects effective actions to counter Kremlin nuclear blackmail from the United Kingdom, China, the United States and France,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
“We demand that an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council be convened immediately for this,” it added.
NATO also joined in the criticism, with spokeswoman Oana Lungescu saying: “Russia’s reference to NATO sharing nuclear weapons is totally misleading. NATO allies act in full respect of their international obligations.”
Lungescu also called Russia’s announcement “dangerous and irresponsible”.
However, she said Western allies have not yet seen “changes in Russia’s nuclear stance that would lead us to adjust ours.”
On Saturday, Putin announced that Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring and ally Belarus “without violating our international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation”.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Russia of violating 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 unacceptableness of its latest nuclear provocations”.
Susi Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons told Al Jazeera that the deployment of nuclear weapons by Russia in Belarus could potentially lead to “extremely catastrophic consequences”.
“It increases the risk of using nuclear weapons by adding more actors, potentially capable of dropping nuclear bombs, and creates the potential for chaos and miscommunication,” Snyder said.
“These weapons, if used, would have similar or greater results than what we saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. They can do massive catastrophic damage.”
‘Nothing unusual’
Putin said the move to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was “nothing unusual”.
“The United States has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on their allies’ territory,” Putin said.
Putin said he had spoken with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and they “agreed to do the same”.
Russia will begin training crews on April 3 and plans to complete construction of a dedicated storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons by July 1.
Germany called the comparison misleading.
“President Putin’s comparison to the sharing of nuclear weapons in NATO is misleading and does not justify the move announced by Russia,” a German foreign ministry official told AFP news agency.
Experts said Russia’s move was important because it has so far prided itself that, unlike the US, it has not deployed nuclear weapons beyond its borders. It may be the first time since the mid-1990s that it has done so.
‘Scare tactics’
Putin has previously said that nuclear tensions were “escalating” worldwide, but that Moscow would not be the first to deploy.
In February 2022, Belarus allowed the Kremlin to launch its invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
Since then, fears have mounted that Belarus would join its ally’s offensive, but President Lukashenko, a key ally of Putin, said he would do so “only if attacked”.
On Sunday, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter that “the Kremlin has taken Belarus as a nuclear hostage”.
He added that the move was “a step towards the internal destabilization of the country”.
Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak added: “(Putin) admits he is afraid of losing and all he can do is scare people”.
The Russian leader said renewed talks with Lukashenko on the issue were spurred by a British official’s suggestion that depleted uranium weapons be sent to Ukraine.
Russia has “what to reciprocate” if the West supplied Ukraine with such munitions, he added.
“It is no exaggeration that we have hundreds of thousands of such grenades. We haven’t used it yet.”
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