Putin’s new threat to the West: Russia siting nuclear weapons in Belarus close to Polish border is ‘blackmail tactic’ and testing how far US will go to defend Europe, academic warns
- Academic Mark Almond said weapon moves designed to add ‘uncertainty’
- Read more: Putin tells West ‘go to hell’ as he moves nuclear weapons to Belarus
Russia’s siting of nuclear weapons in Belarus is a ‘blackmail tactic’ to threaten the West, a leading academic warned yesterday.
Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, said President Vladimir Putin’s decision to station them close to the Polish border was designed to add ‘layers of uncertainty’ about Russia’s strategy.
Because the weapons are tactical medium-range devices they present no risk to American cities – unlike the intercontinental ballistic missiles that are housed in Siberian silos.
‘The Belarussian weapons are a far bigger threat to Western Europe,’ said Dr Almond.
‘It poses the question to Washington – if they are not directly threatened, how far are they willing to go in risking nuclear suicide in the defence of European allies?
Speaking at Russia’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg on June 16, Putin told those gathered that the first warheads had arrived in Belarus
Belarus has already started taking delivery of Russian nukes, some of which President Alexander Lukashenko (with Putin on June 9) boasted are three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Pictured: Russian Yars intercontinental ballistic missile systems drive along a street before a military parade in Moscow, May 9
‘It is a blackmail tactic dating back to when Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany during the Cruise Missile crisis of the 1980s.
‘This is a ploy to try to decouple the Western alliance over Ukraine by threatening neighbours like Poland that act as supply routes for our military aid.’
He said the Kremlin’s move offered Russia other advantages – including to its key ally in the region, Belarus’s President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
These include ambiguity about control of the weapons. Russia has oversight, but Belarus may claim it could deploy them if fighting spills across its border from Ukraine.
Abramovich blocks aid
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is reneging on a pledge to send the £2.3 billion from his sale of Chelsea FC to victims of Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Roman Abramovich, pictured in 2021, had pledged to send £2.3 billion from his sale of Chelsea FC to war victims
Abramovich, forced out of the club because of his close links to the Russian president, received the funds over a year ago.
The Mail on Sunday understands they could be released to Ukraine with his permission but he is refusing to sign them off unless a sum is gifted to Russian citizens affected by the war. Neither the UK nor the European Commission will agree to this. Last night Labour MP Chris Bryant said: ‘The people of Ukraine need help to rebuild their nation and their lives now, not in some distant future.’
Abramovich’s UK company Millhouse Capital has been approached for comment.
Western allies will also be wary of supplying arms to Ukraine if there is a danger that they could be directed at Belarus and raise the threat of nuclear attack.
In addition, Belarussian protest groups will be deterred from overthrowing their government, which would force Russia to intervene to protect its nuclear assets.
Mr Putin told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday that the transfer of the warheads to Belarus would be completed by the end of summer.
He insisted they would be used only if Russia’s territory or state was threatened, adding it was a warning to anyone ‘thinking of inflicting a strategic defeat on us’.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he didn’t see ‘any indications’ that Russia was preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
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