Putin nukes in Belarus, while US condemns
Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the West is doing everything possible to hand Moscow a strategic defeat in Ukraine.
Following Russia’s deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus, the US made no changes to its nuclear posture. We condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks that Moscow could “theoretically” use nuclear weapons if its territorial integrity or existence were threatened.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that Washington’s nuclear stance had not changed, as Putin confirmed for the first time that Russia had placed nuclear weapons in Belarus.
“We see no reason to change our nuclear posture.” “We see no evidence that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” Blinken said.
Blinken described Putin’s decision to station Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus as “ironic,” given that the Russian leader justified his invasion of Ukraine to prevent Kyiv from acquiring such weapons.
Putin said on Friday at Russia’s annual economic forum in Saint Petersburg that Russian tactical nuclear warheads had already been delivered to close ally Belarus but that Russia did not need nuclear weapons for the time being.
“The first nuclear warheads were delivered to Belarusian territory.” But only the first ones, or the first part of them. However, we will finish this job by the end of the summer or the end of the year,” Putin said.
The deployment of the warheads, the first outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, was intended as a warning to the West about arming and supporting Ukraine, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He claimed that the West was doing everything possible to hand Russia a strategic defeat in Ukraine.
“It is precisely as a deterrent so that all those who are contemplating inflicting a strategic defeat on us are aware of this circumstance,” Putin explained.
However, for the time being, he said Russia does not need to use nuclear weapons, adding that talks with the West to reduce Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal are off the table.
“Nuclear weapons have been developed to ensure our security in the broadest sense and the survival of the Russian state,” Putin said. “But we… have no such need [to use them].”
“Just discussing the possibility of using nuclear weapons lowers the nuclear threshold.” We have more than NATO countries; they want us to be fewer. “Fuck them,” he said.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Moscow’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus is part of long-standing efforts to “cement Russia’s de facto military control over Belarus.” However, it is unlikely to signal a Russian escalation.
‘Putin says to ukrain You can’t go on fighting like that for long.’
In a defiant tone about his war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russian forces had so far yielded no meaningful results and that Ukraine’s forces were suffering heavy losses and would soon run out of their military equipment, leaving them utterly reliant on hardware supplied by the West.
“There is not anything left. Everything they fight with and use is brought in from the outside. “You cannot fight like that for long,” he explained.
Focusing on Western-supplied armour, such as German-made Leopard tanks, Putin stated that his forces regularly destroyed them and that if Kyiv obtained US-made F-16 fighter jets from its allies, they would also be destroyed. He also implied that Russia would target such fighter planes outside of Ukraine.
“If they are stationed outside Ukraine and used in combat operations, we will have to consider how and where to engage those assets that are being used in combat operations against us,” he said.
HE ADDED THAT targeting F-16 aircraft outside of Ukraine posed a “significant risk” of dragging NATO more profoundly into the conflict.
Later that day, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that every metre of Ukrainian territory retaken from Russian forces was “of the utmost importance” in the current counteroffensive operation.
“Every soldier, every new step we take, every metre of Ukrainian land liberated from the enemy is of the utmost importance,” Zelenskyy said after meeting top military commanders in his nightly video address.
Earlier, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said troops were “engaged in active moves to advance in several directions at once” along the front line, and troops had advanced up to 2km (1.3 miles) “in each direction” in the south.
Maliar said Russian forces attempted to dislodge Ukrainian forces from established positions in Ukraine’s east. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces around the devastated city of Bakhmut were attempting to push Russian forces out from the town’s outskirts.
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