Putin holding Belarus as nuclear hostage, says Kyiv

Kyiv seeks emergency UN Security Council meeting after Russian President threatens to station tactical nuclear arms in Belarus.

President Vladimir Putin said President Lukashenko of Belarus had requested Russian nuclear warheads to arm ten aircraft. Picture: AFP

Ukraine said last night (Sunday) that Russia was holding Belarus “as a nuclear hostage” after President Putin threatened to move tactical nuclear weapons there.

NATO also reacted with outrage to Putin’s “dangerous” and “irresponsible” statement on Saturday, in which he said he had agreed to a request by President Lukashenko and had fitted out ten Belarusian war planes to carry Russian nuclear warheads.

He said he was acting after Britain’s decision, confirmed last week, to send Ukraine shells tipped with depleted uranium along with its gift of 14 Challenger 2 tanks. The comparison was met with incredulity by Ukrainian officials. The transfer of Russian nuclear weapons outside its territory would reverse 1990s agreements under which Russia withdrew all the old Soviet Union’s nuclear deterrent to its own territory. “The Kremlin took Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, tweeted.

putin’s statement about placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus – a step towards internal destabilization of the country – maximizes the level of negative perception and public rejection of russia and putin in Belarusian society. The kremlin took Belarus as a nuclear hostage.

— Oleksiy Danilov (@OleksiyDanilov) March 26, 2023

Ukraine’s foreign ministry called on the international community to “deter and prevent any possibility of the aggressor state’s use of nuclear weapons”.

It said: “We demand that an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council be immediately convened for this purpose.”

Putin’s speech marked a heightening of rhetoric over Ukraine in advance of what is predicted to be the key moment of the war - an expected counteroffensive that hopes to drive back Russian forces either to the border or to the Black Sea. Britain’s defence ministry has claimed that Russia’s offensive aimed at the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region had “stalled” and that it was moving towards a defensive posture along the front.

Russian efforts are said to be directed at a recruitment drive to bolster the army after the heavy losses it sustained in its winter campaign. It hopes to sign up 400,000 more soldiers.

Putin’s statement appeared to be a warning of the consequences of a Ukrainian victory in its counteroffensive, whose date is as yet unclear. He said repositioning nuclear weapons on the soil of Belarus was justified because the US also had nuclear weapons on its allies’ territory. He said he also reserved the right to respond to the British decision to send depleted uranium shells, which are better at penetrating armour but have been linked to deleterious health effects in local populations. “Russia of course has what it needs to answer,” he said. “Without exaggeration, we have hundreds of thousands of such shells. We have not used them yet.”

Russia’s preparations to fight off the counteroffensive were also mentioned by Dmitry Medvedev, the Putin loyalist, former prime minister and president, who is deputy head of the national security council. He said he had read a wartime message from Stalin to members of a state commission on arms production to “gee them up”. Medvedev said, quoting Stalin: “In a few days, if you turn out to be violators of your duty to the motherland, I will begin to crush you like criminals who spurn its honour and interests.”

The Times