Moscow will finish building a storage for tactical arms in the neighboring country by July, the Russian president has said
Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons might arrive to Belarus as early as this summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Moscow is finishing the construction of a specialized storage for such arms amid repeated calls by Minsk to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Belarusian territory, he added.
The storage in Belarus will be ready on July 1, Putin told Russia 24 TV. The president also said that Moscow does not plan to hand over control over any tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk but would only deploy its own arms to the Belarusian territory. He did not specify when exactly the weapons would be transported to the new storage.
The move was prompted by London’s decision to provide Kiev with depleted uranium munitions, Putin explained. The UK announced its plans to send such shells to Ukraine for use with Challenger 2 battle tanks earlier in March. Moscow blasted the move as a sign of “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” on the part of London and Washington.
The US dismissed Russia’s concerns by calling depleted uranium shells a “commonplace type of munition” which has “been in use for decades.” The Russian Defense Ministry then warned that their use could trigger nothing short of a radioactive disaster in Ukraine, citing the aftermath of the use of such munitions by NATO in Iraq.
