Moscow will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, says Putin

Russia moved 10 aircraft to Belarus on Saturday which are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, news agency TASS reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the placing of a nuclear weapon in Belarus will not violate nuclear non-proliferation agreements.

"We agreed with Lukashenko that we would place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime," Tass quoted Putin as saying.

Putin claimed that the United States has also stationed nuclear weapons on the territory of European allies. He added that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland.

Russia will have completed the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July 1 and the control of arms will not be transferred to Minsk, Putin added.

The placement of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus came as the United States (US) imposed fresh sanctions on the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko for its continued support of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The sanctions also target Lukashenko's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

The newly imposed sanctions targeted significant Belarusian manufacturers as well as the benefits personally enjoyed by Mr. Lukashenko. Specifically, his extravagant Boeing 737 aircraft, which he employs for his own personal excursions with his family and associates, was explicitly recognized as a possession linked to Mr. Lukashenko, who had previously been subjected to personal sanctions.

The development came as intense fighting is currently going on around the town of Bakhmut, between Russian and Ukrainian forces with British military intelligence claiming that Russia is moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine.

“The Bakhmut direction is the most difficult. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the defense forces, the situation is being stabilized,” Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said in a post on Telegram giving a synopsis of a telephone call with Adm. Sir Tony Radakin, Britain's chief of defense staff.

With inputs from agencies