Belarus Receives Russian Nuclear Weapons, ‘Some More Powerful Than Hiroshima, Nagasaki’: Presid

Belarus has started receiving missiles and bombs from Russia, with some of them being three times more powerful than atomic munitions that were dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. This is Moscow’s first deployment of such warheads — shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield — outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. “We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia,” Lukashenko said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel which was posted on the Belarusian Belta state news agency’s Telegram channel.

“The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said.

The development comes after Russian President Valdimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow, which will retain control of the tactical nuclear weapons, would start deploying them in Belarus after special storage facilities to house them were made ready.

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Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenko had said separately that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons would be physically deployed on the territory of Belarus “in several days” and that he had the facilities to host longer-range missiles too if ever needed.

In March, Putin had announced that he had agreed to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, pointing to the US deployment of such weapons in a host of European countries over many decades.

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Putin’s decision was criticized by the US but has said it has no intention of altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons and has not seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

However, this step by Russia is being closely watched by the United States and its allies as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.