Ukraine calls for Security Council meeting over Belarus nuke threat

Western officials play down the significance of Russia stationing tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Ukrainian officials have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry, in a written statement released overnight on Sunday, said moving the weapons to Belarus would undermine nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

“Ukraine expects effective actions to counter the nuclear blackmail of the Kremlin,” the statement said, before calling on the other permanent members of the Security Council to intervene. “We demand to immediately convene an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council for this purpose.”

Mr Putin said in remarks published Saturday that Russia would finish building a storage facility for its tactical nuclear weapons — which are designed for battlefield use and aren’t large enough to wipe out entire cities — in Belarus by July. The announcement is the latest in a string of steps the Russian president has taken to remind Ukraine — and, more important, its allies — of Moscow’s nuclear capabilities.

A spokesman for the White House said the administration is closely monitoring the issue but thus far hasn’t seen evidence that Mr Putin had moved nuclear weapons or planned to use them in Ukraine.

“We would agree that no nuclear war should be fought, no nuclear war can be won, clearly that would cross a major threshold,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “We’ve seen nothing that would cause us to change our own strategic deterrent posture.”

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko hasn’t publicly commented on the announcement, but Mr Putin told a state television program on Sunday that the Belarusian leader has “long raised the question of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus”. “There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades,” Mr Putin added. “They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries, NATO countries, in Europe.”

NATO officials rejected a parallel. “Russia’s reference to NATO’s nuclear sharing is totally misleading,” spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said on Twitter. She said NATO countries act in line with their international commitments, while “Russia has consistently broken its arms control commitments.”

Last summer, Mr Lukashenko said his military’s Su-24 warplanes had been modified to carry nuclear weapons, a move that had been agreed upon with Mr Putin, Belarusian state news agency Belta reported at the time.

Western officials and analysts largely played down the significance of the announcement. Moscow has been using Belarus as a launchpad for assaults on Ukraine since the start of the invasion and has already sent Iskander-M missiles, which are nuclear-capable and can deliver a payload of over 500kg to most of Ukraine’s territory, into the country.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who supporters believe rightfully won the country’s 2020 presidential vote, said on Saturday that Russia’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus violates the country’s constitution and contradicts the will of the Belarusian people to remain a non-nuclear state.

“Russia acts as the occupying force, violating national security and putting Belarus on the collision course with its neighbours and the international community,” she wrote on Twitter.

The German Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, accused Mr Putin of “another attempt at nuclear intimidation,” according to German media.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, tweeted on Sunday that “Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation and threat to European security”. He said the EU “stands ready to respond with further sanctions,” if Minsk follows this course of action.

A Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter gunship prepares to take off for a mission against Russian targets on Sunday. Picture: AFP

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the announcement about stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was part of an information campaign designed to inflame Western fears of nuclear escalation, “which remains extremely low”. “Russia has long fielded nuclear-capable weapons able to strike any target that tactical nuclear weapons based in Belarus could hit,” the institute wrote. “Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through.”

Mr Putin said on Sunday that Russia would on April 3 start training crews to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the UN nuclear regulator, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Saturday that its director would again travel to inspect the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant this week. The visit would be his second since the start of the full-scale invasion in February last year.

“Despite our presence at the site for seven months now, the situation at the (Zaporizhzhia) Nuclear Power Plant is still precarious,” the agency’s head, Rafael Grossi, said. “The nuclear safety and security dangers are all too obvious.”

In addition, the British Defence Ministry said Russia was being resupplied with Iranian-made Shahed drones. After a two-week pause in drone attacks in February, Moscow has launched 71 into Ukraine since the start of March. The drone attacks, launched from Russian territory, are “likely to be a further attempt to stretch Ukrainian air defences,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Russia continued missile and artillery strikes across much of Ukraine over the weekend. All of the Ukrainian regions that border Russia were hit, as were the partially occupied regions in the south, according to the Ukrainian Defence Ministry. Five civilians were killed and 25 others were injured.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that its troops were undertaking active operations in the areas of Kupyansk, in Ukraine’s northeast, Donetsk in the east, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

Though fighting in and around the eastern city of Bakhmut has slowed in recent days, Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian forces “continue to storm the city,” while also targeting nearby settlements, such as Chasiv Yar, with artillery fire.

The Wall Street Journal