This would be alongside Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal, Belarusian President Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko, one of Putin’s closest allies, confirmed on Friday (March 31, 2023). At a White House Press briefing, Biden said, “This is dangerous and worrisome talk.”

At first glance, one may tend to agree with Biden. But a closer analysis would reveal another set of geo-political compulsions that would seem to vindicate the Russian President. Putin and Lukashenko have both claimed that the West wants to “ruin” their respective countries.

Lukashenko said he and Putin would together decide the introduction of strategic weapons in his country. “They must understand this—the scoundrels abroad—who today are trying to blow us up from inside and outside,” Lukashenko said. “We’ll stop at nothing to protect our countries, our state and their peoples.”

Within a few days of the British government’s announcement that it would supply Ukraine ammunition containing depleted uranium, Putin declared his intention to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which shares a border with Ukraine. This announcement came on March 25.

A Reuters report said he spoke on state television and mentioned that the reason for talks with Belarus President Lukashenko was triggered by the British Deputy Minister of Defence’s announcement of UK’s intention to provide depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine. Even otherwise, the Belarusian leader has persistently sought the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on his country’s soil.

UK Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie announced on March 20 that Britain was providing Ukraine with ammunition for Challenger 2 battle tanks which contained depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds. The Russian President’s announcement followed soon after this.

The potential threat of nuclear conflict with the US and its European allies also turns the spotlight on precisely how these weapons are positioned by the NATO allies. Putin has compared his plans of nuclear weapons deployment in Belarus to the USA’s long-term strategy of storing nuclear arms in Europe.

Since the 1950s, nuclear weapons have been stationed by the US at NATO bases in Western Europe, at a time when tensions with the Soviet Union were escalating. These weapons were initially moved to the UK in 1954 and then to other countries—Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, the Netherlands, Greece and Belgium.

Currently, there are six bases in five NATO member-nations—Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, where US tactical nuclear weapons are still stationed. The UK and France have their indigenous nuclear capabilities and do not host US weapons any longer.

In the 1970s, the US had deployed over 7,000 weapons in Europe. However, due to arms control agreements and the end of superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union, the number of weapons dropped significantly in the late-1980s and early-1990s.

In 1987, there was a significant achievement in arms control—the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which is no longer in operation. Under this treaty, the US and the Soviet Union removed all their medium-range missiles and launchers that could carry nuclear warheads within a few years.

The current number of nuclear weapons held by the US in Europe is not publicly disclosed, but Western security experts have said there are roughly 100 nuclear bombs lodged in six different facilities.

All of the US nuclear bombs in Europe are B61 gravity bombs, the only tactical nuclear weapon the US still possesses. It can carry warheads with a large range of yields, resulting in blasts that can range up to a few hundred kilotons, in contrast to those used in the 1945 attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which had yields of only 15 and 21 kilotons.

Western experts say that Russia has stationed its nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarines and large bombers, in over 12 military facilities or even more located throughout its extensive land.

The presence of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a Russian territory sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, has been acting as a deterrent to what Russia perceives as a Western threat to its sovereignty. A senior government official in Russia confirmed in 2018 that nuclear-capable Iskander missiles were deployed to Kaliningrad.

According to Associated Press, the US government believes the Kremlin possesses approximately 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which include different types of bombs, warheads and artillery rounds that can be carried by tactical aircraft.

Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan all relinquished N-arms after late-1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Under the ‘Budapest Memorandum’ which accompanied relinquishing the weapons, the US, Russia and Britain agreed to respect the territorial integrity of those countries. Lukashenko did not want to give up his country’s nuclear arms, but says it was forced to do so by then Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Ukraine has complained repeatedly that Crimea’s 2014 annexation by Russia from Ukraine and the 2022 invasion were both in violation of that agreement.

Apparent Soviet strength in the aftermath of World War II was not enough to allay Soviet suspicion of the Western world. Joseph Stalin had a deep-rooted phobia of foreign influence and contacts with the West. During most of the Cold War period, Soviet leaders feared the influence of Western liberalism on its citizens and the West’s technological superiority. Both the experience of Western intervention during the Russian Civil War and the perfidious Nazi invasion gave the Soviet Union a complex about being undermined by the West through military might, or otherwise.

Many Russians, including Putin, considered the 1991 Soviet Union collapse nothing short of a disaster. Since 1991, there was a steady erosion of Russian influence in its own backyard coupled with expansion of Western ideas and influence of the NATO military alliance. Western promises that NATO would halt from expanding beyond Germany were so broken that Putin now sees Russia as being under siege by the West. His Ukraine invasion may be regarded as a last-ditch attempt to forestall Western influence over territories that Russia has dominated historically.

Putin’s Russia—as the man, himself—is akin to a cornered tiger apt to turn around and strike. And strike mercilessly! The West needs to be extremely careful how it steps on the tiger’s tail in view of Russia’s distinct nuclear capabilities. Putin’s Russia has an elephant’s memory of resentment towards its Western antagonists. And it is no longer acting with the same restraint that it had shown even a decade ago! (IPA Service)