Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there would be a military exercise involving the practice deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia with ally Belarus. This decision came after threats from France, Britain, and the United States, according to Russia’s defense ministry. Putin stated that this exercise was part of planned training and that there was nothing unusual about it.
Last year, Putin mentioned that some tactical nuclear weapons had been transferred to Belarus, marking the first time such warheads were moved out of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. He also suggested that Belarus participate in one of the stages of the nuclear exercise, expressing that these types of exercises are regularly held between the two countries. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that this was the third training exercise of its kind between the two nations.
Russia and the United States are the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, possessing the majority of the world’s nuclear warheads. China, France, and Britain have significant arsenals as well. Russia has around 1,558 non-strategic nuclear warheads, though the exact numbers are uncertain due to a lack of transparency. There is also uncertainty about the weapons that Russia has provided to Belarus and how they are being stored.
There are still questions among arms control experts about the nature of the weapons supplied to Belarus and how they are being stored. Typically, setting up storage, security, and barracks for such a deployment would take time, and Russian nuclear weapons are under the control of the Russian defense ministry’s 12th Main Directorate. It is not clear if the 12th Main Directorate is present in Belarus, according to Western experts.
The use of nuclear weapons in warfare has not occurred since the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Pentagon stated that they have not observed any changes in Russia’s strategic nuclear forces despite Moscow’s plans for exercises involving the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons. This use of nuclear weapons remains a topic of concern for the international community, given the potential catastrophic consequences of such actions.
