Belarus’s longtime President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that his country was ready to host Russian nuclear weapons if NATO were to transport US atomic bombs from Germany to Eastern Europe.
In an interview, he also said for the first time that he recognizes the Crimean peninsula as part of Russia and plans to visit it soon. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move considered illegal by the West.
Mr Lukashenko made the remarks as he stepped up ties with Russia, his main ally and backer, amid tensions with the West over his controversial re-election last year and the brutal crackdown on dissent by his government in Belarus.
Asked about the possible redeployment of US atomic bombs in Eastern Europe if the new German government was reluctant to house weapons, Lukashenko said he would call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to send withdrawn nuclear weapons after the withdrawal. 1991 back to Belarus. .
“I would give Putin a chance to return nuclear weapons to Belarus,” Lukashenko said in an interview with Dmitry Kiselyov, head of Russia’s state-run media group Rossiya Segodnya.
The Belarusian leader did not specify what kind of weapons Belarus would be willing to host. He added that Belarus has carefully maintained the necessary military infrastructure dating back to Soviet times.
Opposition leader Svitlana Tikhanuskaya, who fled Belarus under pressure after an unsuccessful attempt to oust Lukashenko in last year’s election, has denied the allegations. “We should not trust such a person to handle matches, let alone nuclear weapons,” he told the Associated Press.
Svitlana Tikhanuskaya also said that the development of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus would violate international arms agreements and the will of the people of Belarus. “The majority of Belarusians have spoken out against Belarus’s neutrality,” he said.
Speaking earlier this month, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the Western military alliance would have to consider redeploying nuclear weapons to the east if the new German government changed its policy on nuclear exchanges.
“Germany can, of course, decide whether there will be nuclear weapons in the country, but the alternative is to easily end up with nuclear weapons in other European countries, also in eastern Germany,” Stoltenberg said.
AP
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
.
