Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning to move tactical nuclear weapons to storage facilities in Belarus — and potentially deploy them from that location later — in a move he compared to U.S. nuclear installments in NATO countries.
Russia is building storage units for the weapons that are expected to be ready on July 1, according to the Financial Times. Lukashenko has allowed Belarus to serve as a staging ground for the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the earliest days of the war.
Putin said in remarks on Saturday that he was moving the nuclear weapons to Belarus in response to a longstanding request from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to counter NATO. He also said the move is a counter to the U.K.’s decision to send armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium to Ukraine.
Moscow would retain control of the nuclear armaments, Putin said.
“There is nothing unusual here: first of all, the US has been doing this for decades,” Putin said. “They placed…
