Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans on Saturday to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, a warning to the West as it steps up military support for Ukraine.
Putin said he was responding to Britain’s decision this past week to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.
Russia claimed these rounds have nuclear components.
He said Russia would maintain control over the tactical nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus. Construction of storage facilities for them would be completed by July 1, Putin said.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has long asked for the weapons, Putin said, speaking in an interview broadcast Saturday evening on Russian state television.
Putin insisted that Russia would not be violating its international obligations on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, saying the United States has long deployed its nuclear weapons on the territory of its NATO allies.
Belarus shares borders with three NATO members: Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
What are these
weapons and what is Russia’s policy on them:
What are tactical nuclear weapons?
Academics and arms control negotiators have spent years
arguing about how to define tactical nuclear weapons (TNW).
The
clue is in the name: they are nuclear weapons used for specific
tactical gains on the battlefield, rather than, say, destroying
the biggest cities of the US or Russia.
Few people know exactly how many TNW Russia has because it
is an area still shrouded in traditions of Cold War secrecy.
Russia has a huge numerical superiority over the US and the transatlantic NATO military alliance when it
comes to TNW: the US believes Russia has around 2,000
such working tactical warheads, 10 times more than Washington.
These warheads can be delivered via a variety of missiles,
torpedoes and gravity bombs from naval, air or ground forces.
They could even be simply driven into an area and detonated.
The US has around 200 such weapons, half of which
are at bases in Europe. These 12-ft B61 nuclear bombs, with
different yields of 0.3 to 170 kilotons, are deployed at six air
bases across Italy, Germany, Türkiye, Belgium and the
Netherlands.
The atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese
city of Hiroshima in 1945 was about 15 kilotons.
Who gives the Russian launch order?
The president is the ultimate decision maker when it comes
to using Russian nuclear weapons, both strategic and
non-strategic, according to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia had around
22,000 TNWs while the US had around 11,500. Most of
these weapons have been dismantled or are waiting to be
dismantled.
The ones that remain are stored in at least 30 military
bases and silos under the control of the 12th Main Directorate
of the defence ministry (12th GUMO) headed by Igor Kolesnikov,
who reports directly to the defence minister.
To prepare a TNW strike, it is likely that Putin would
consult with senior allies from the Russian Security Council
before ordering, via the general staff, that a warhead be joined
with a delivery vehicle and prepared for a potential launch
order.
Because Putin could not predict the US response, Russia’s
entire nuclear posture would change: submarines would go to sea,
missile forces would be put on full alert and strategic bombers
would be visible at bases, ready for immediate takeoff.
Stationing nuclear weapons
After the Soviet collapsed in 1991, the US went
to enormous efforts to return the Soviet nuclear weapons
stationed in Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to Russia — which
inherited the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union.
Since the weapons were returned in the early 1990s, Russia
has not announced any nuclear weapon deployments outside its
borders.
Putin said on Saturday the agreement with Belarus would not
contravene non-proliferation agreements.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,
signed by the Soviet Union, says that no nuclear power can
transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a non-nuclear power,
but it does allow for the weapons to be deployed outside its
borders but under its control — as with US nuclear weapons in
Europe.
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