NATO has criticised Vladimir Putin for what it called his “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, one day after the Russian president said he would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Key points:
- Russia has announced plans to store nuclear weapons in Belarus
- Ukraine called for a meeting of the UN Security Council in response
- Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council head says Russia is holding Belarus hostage
Mr Putin announced the move on Saturday and likened it to the US stationing its weapons in Europe, while insisting that Russia would not violate its nuclear non-proliferation promises.
Although the move was not unexpected, it is one of Russia’s most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, and Ukraine called for a meeting of the UN Security Council in response.
While the US played down concerns about Mr Putin’s announcement, NATO said the Russian president’s non-proliferation pledge and his description of US weapons deployment overseas were both way off the mark.
“Russia’s reference to NATO’s nuclear sharing is totally misleading. NATO allies act with full respect of their international commitments,” a NATO spokesperson said.
“Russia has consistently broken its arms control commitments, most recently suspending its participation in the New START Treaty,” the unnamed spokesperson said.
New START caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
A top security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Danilov, said Russia’s plan would also destabilise Belarus, which he said had been taken “hostage” by Moscow.
Experts said Russia’s move was significant since it had until now been proud that unlike the United States, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders.
It may be the first time since the mid-1990s that it has done so.
Another senior Zelenskyy adviser on Sunday scoffed at Mr Putin’s plan, saying the Russian leader is “too predictable”.
“Making a statement about tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, he admits that he is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare with tactics,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Washington appeared to see no change in the potential for Moscow to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, and it and NATO said the news would not affect their own nuclear position.
“We have not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own,” the NATO spokesperson wrote.
Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in a note late on Saturday that the risk of escalation to nuclear war “remains extremely low”.
“ISW continues to assess that Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through in order to break Western resolve,” it wrote.
However, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons called Putin’s announcement an extremely dangerous escalation.
“In the context of the war in Ukraine, the likelihood of miscalculation or misinterpretation is extremely high.
“Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences,” it said on Twitter.
Putin decries a western ‘axis’
Mr Putin said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long requested the deployment.
While the Belarusian army has not formally fought in Ukraine, Minsk and Moscow have a close military relationship.
Minsk allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine last year and the two nations stepped up joint military training.
Mr Putin on Sunday also denied Moscow was creating a military alliance with Beijing and instead asserted that Western powers are building a new “axis” similar to the partnership between Germany and Japan during World War Two.
“That is why Western analysts…are talking about the West starting to build a new axis similar to the one created in the 1930s by the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy and militarist Japan,” Mr Putin said.
On the battlefield, Ukraine has shown more optimism in recent days about the brutal months-long battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Bakhmut is a major Russian target as it tries to fully capture Ukraine’s industrialised Donbas region. At one point, Russian commanders expressed confidence the city would fall soon but such claims have tailed off amid heavy fighting.
Ukrainian forces have managed to blunt Russia’s offensive in and around Bakhmut, where the situation is stabilising, commander in chief General Valery Zaluzhniy said on Saturday.
The General Staff said Ukrainian forces had repelled 85 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours in several parts of the eastern front, including the Bakhmut area.
Reuters