Disarmament expert: "In Belarus, they will choose a storage for Yao, but the weapon itself may not appear there"

The heads of the defense departments of Russia and Belarus, Sergei Shoigu and Viktor Khrenin, signed documents determining the conditions for the content of Russian non -strategic nuclear weapons in a special storage in Belarusian territory. This was reported on May 25 by the press service of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

“Russia does not transfer nuclear weapons to the Republic of Belarus: control over it and the decision to use it remains behind the Russian side,” Shoigu said during the meeting. “The placement of non -strategic nuclear weapons is an effective response to the aggressive policy of the countries unfriendly to us,” said Khrenin, in turn. According to him, the Western countries have “unprecedented pressure” for both Moscow and Minsk.

A researcher at the UN Institute for Learning the Problems of Disarmament Pavel Feat told The Insider that the signing of the agreement on the placement of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus looks a purely political step.

“It cannot be ruled out that this will be limited to the real movement of charges to the territory of Belarus may not occur. There are many reasons for this, including the resistance of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, where [work] responsible and conservative people [work]. I hope for bureaucratic and institutional resistance to the movement of ammunition, because [then] the troops must be moved and so on. This process is complex and long. I hope that everything is limited to a political statement and that there will be nothing but this.

It is still unknown where the storage will be created, although the Russian president promised that by July they would already be opened. In my opinion, it is difficult to create a full-fledged storage of nuclear ammunition from scratch, which will be provided with all the necessary security and service systems. Probably, they will simply choose some object that is already under control, and they will say that there is the possibility of placing nuclear weapons. The weapon itself may not appear there, but there will simply be a storage with the possibility of its placement, and if the decision is made, the charges will be transported there.

In Belarus in Soviet times, there were many storage facilities, but we can be sure that none of them have been preserved in its original form. Maybe some concrete walls or doors remain there, but in any case it will be necessary to create [storage] from almost zero.

There is nothing good that another country appears in which nuclear weapons are located. But from a practical and military point of view, this does not change anything. There is no significant difference with which territory the bomber will take off, from Russia or from Belarus. ”

In March, Vladimir Putin announced the construction of a storage for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. According to him, Russia has "hundreds of thousands" of shells with depleted uranium.

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