The self-proclaimed president of Belarus Oleksandr Lukashenko informed that his country had begun receiving Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Some samples, he said, are three times more powerful than the atomic bombs that the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Reuters writes about it.
"We have missiles and bombs that we received from Russia," Lukashenko said in an interview with the Russian propaganda channel "Russia-1".
He also noted that Belarus has numerous nuclear storage facilities left over from the Soviet era, and it has restored five to six of them. According to Lukashenko, he did not just ask the Russian dictator Putin for weapons, but "demanded" them.
"We have always been a target. They [the West] want to tear us apart from 2020. No one has ever fought against a nuclear country — a country that has nuclear weapons," he noted.
- On May 25, the defense ministers of Belarus and Russia Viktor Khrenin and Serhiy Shoigu signed documents on the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. In this way, Russia will place tactical nuclear weapons in a special storage facility in Belarus, and only it will be able to control them. According to Khrenin, the agreement is "an effective response to the aggressive policy of countries unfriendly to us."
- Putin then stated that Lukashenko had long raised the issue of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Putin says that the US has long deployed such weapons in a number of countries, so there is "nothing unusual" in Belarusʼ request.
- On May 29, Lukashenko advised those willing to obtain nuclear weapons to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus.
- On June 9, Putin informed that the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus will begin immediately after the preparation of facilities for them is completed on July 7-8.