На русском языке:
Путин: Россия к 1 июля построит в Беларуси хранилище тактического ядерного оружия
На беларускай мове:
Пуцін: Расія да 1 ліпеня пабудуе ў Беларусі сховішча тактычнай ядзернай зброі
In the evening of March 25, 2023, an interview between Vladimir Putin and Pavel Zarubin, the author of the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” was shown on the air of the TV channel Russia 1, in which Putin said that Russia would build a storage for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
According to Putin, the construction of the special storage for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be completed by July 1.
Putin was also asked about the sending of nuclear weapons to Belarus, to which he replied that Russia doesn’t send nuclear weapons to Belarus, but “it is going to do the same thing as the U.S. does with its allies.” Quote:
Zarubin: When and under what conditions can the weapon itself be sent?
Putin: We don’t send it. And the U.S. doesn’t send it to its allies. They just… We are basically doing the same thing they’ve been doing for decades. They have [nuclear weapons] in certain countries of their allies, prepare their carriers and train their crews. We are going to do the same thing. This is exactly what Aliaksandr Grigoryevich asked us to do.
In this interview, Putin also said that Russia has already helped Belarus to re-equip 10 aircraft of the Belarusian Air Force for the use of tactical nuclear weapons and that Belarus has already received the Iskander missile system, which can also be a tactical nuclear weapon carrier. According to Putin, the training of Iskander crews will begin on April 3.
We note that for the first time Lukashenka mentioned the re-equipping of Belarusian aircraft to carry nuclear weapons during a meeting with Putin in June 2022. Later, on August 26, 2022, speaking at BelOMO enterprise, Lukashenka stated that Belarusian tactical bombers had already been re-equipped to carry nuclear weapons and named the model of Su-24 that had been removed from service.
We assume that we are talking about the re-equipment of Su-25 attack aircraft of the Belarusian Air Force, which are stationed at the airfield in Lida.
Besides, on December 19, 2022, it was announced about putting Iskander missile systems sent by Russia on combat duty in Belarus. Later, on February 1, 2023, the Ministry of Defense of Belarus reported that the Belarusian military began full independent operation of the Iskander missile system.
According to our data, the system came into service of the 465th Missile Brigade (military unit 61732, Asipovichy district) armed with several divisions of Tochka-U. This is the only missile brigade in the Belarusian Armed Forces.
