Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that if any other country wants to join the Russia-Belarus union, there are “nuclear weapons for all”.

Russia last week moved ahead with its plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the Kremlin’s first deployment of such weapons outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, raising concerns in the West.

In an interview broadcast late Sunday night on Russian state television, Lukashenko, President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest ally among Russia’s neighbors, said it must be “strategically understood” that Minsk and Moscow they have a unique opportunity to unite.

“No one is against Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation,” Lukashenko said.

“If anyone is worried … it’s very simple: join the Union State of Belarus and Russia. That’s it: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.” He clarified that this was his view – not Russia’s.

Russia and Belarus are officially members of the Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics.

However, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, whose country of 20 million has close historical ties to Moscow but has refused to recognize Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine, rejected Lukashenko’s invitation to join the bloc.

“I appreciated his joke,” Tokayev said, according to a post from his office on the Telegram app, adding that Kazakhstan is already a member of a broader Russian-led trade bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union, so no further trade was necessary. integration.

“As for nuclear weapons, we do not need them because we have joined the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the Treaty on the Comprehensive Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” he said, a remark that could be interpreted as a ‘nail’ to Moscow and Minsk.

“We remain committed to our obligations under these international documents.”

Russia used Belarusian territory to launch its invasion of neighboring Ukraine last February, and since then their military cooperation has intensified, with joint training high schools on Belarusian soil.

Yesterday, Sunday, the Belarusian Ministry of Defense announced that another unit of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems has arrived from Moscow and will soon be ready for combat..X