Putin: Russia to deploy tactical nukes in Belarus, General Staff introduced limits on ammo use

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has “quite a lot” of depleted uranium munitions but has not used it yet, TASS reports.

Rossiya-1 TV showed a few teasers of Putin’s interview with Russian reporter Pavel Zarubin.

The Russian leader said that the country would finish constructing “a special storage for tactical nuclear weapons” in Belarus on 1 July. According to him, Russia has already deployed ten planes capable of carrying these weapons in Belarus, while also handing an Iskander missile system to Minsk.

Putin added that Ukraine receiving weapons represents a threat to Russia but the country is planning to produce more than 1,600 tanks in one year. Therefore, Russia will have three times more tanks than Ukraine, he noted.

According to the Russian leader, the Russian General Staff is forced to impose a limit on ammo use. He noted that he did not want to give a rational assessment of the actions of Russian generals at that moment.

“The Russian Armed Forces spent a lot more [ammo than Ukraine]. I don’t want to comment on how rational the decisions made on various levels of the military command were but the Defence Ministry and General Staff are forced to introduce limits,” he noted.

Earlier, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, reported that the Russian Defence Ministry does not provide his soldiers with ammunition. “The Chief of General Staff and the Minister of Defence give orders left and right, which say that the Wagner Group should not only refuse to give ammunition, but also not to be helped by air transport,” he said then.

In response, the Defence Ministry said that “all requests for ammunition for the assault units are carried out as soon as possible,” while attempts to "bring the rift in the close mechanism of cooperation and support between the units of the Russian grouping are counterproductive and only play to the enemy’s advantage”.