Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to Russia’s St. Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday that he had begun transferring some so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons to Belarus, meaning that they have a lower power and range than nuclear bombs. traditional, generally defined instead as “strategic”. It is not clear exactly how many weapons Putin was talking about, who added that the transfer will be completed «by the summer or by the end of the year», and that the weapons will be stored in dedicated, refurbished Soviet-era facilities.
At the moment there are no independent confirmations on the actual transfer of arms, which would be a rather significant event: it would be the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union that Russia has sent nuclear weapons outside its territory. In 1996 weapons found in other former Soviet countries (such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) were brought back to Russia.
As on other occasions in which he spoke of his nuclear weapons, Putin said that “theoretically” he could decide to use them if the territorial integrity or existence of Russian territory were threatened. The degree to which Putin considers actions somehow related to Russian territory “threatening” is rather arbitrary, but there seems to be no reason to believe that the use of nuclear weapons is imminent or even probable.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, responded to Putin’s announcement with a certain calm, saying that “there are no indications of any kind that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons”, and that, of as a result, the United States does not see the need to prepare for such a scenario.
Putin had already said he wanted to move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus last March, during an interview broadcast on state television Russia 1, without specifying when he wanted to do it. On that occasion he had added that he did not believe that any movement of arms would violate the nuclear non-proliferation agreements: in this regard he had mentioned the United States and their nuclear weapons present in various allied countries, including Italy. Even on that occasion, the United States had not shown any concern about Putin’s intention.
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Belarus is governed by the authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Putin and described as “Europe’s last dictator”. Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin is often described as a relationship of subjection and dependence. Belarusian territory was used by Russia to attack Ukraine and launch its invasion on February 24, 2022. Commenting on Putin’s announcement that he would move some of his nuclear weapons to Belarus, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the Defense Council of Ukraine, he had accused him of wanting to make Belarus his “nuclear hostage”.
Tactical nuclear weapons can vary from about one to 100 kilotons (the kiloton indicates the energy released by an explosion of a thousand tons of TNT): the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons.
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