Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow will start deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus when the necessary special storage facilities in the former Soviet republic are completed early next month.
The announcement comes several months after Putin first described plans to move tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in March, pointing to U.S. deployment of similar weaponry at NATO bases in a number of European countries over many decades.
Belarus’ longtime authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, recently described the development as a unique chance for Minsk and Moscow to unite. Belarus, along with Kazakhstan and Ukraine, relinquished its nuclear weapons to Russia in the 1990s in exchange for security guarantees….