NATO accuses Putin of dangerous nuclear rhetoric

NATO criticised Vladimir Putin for what it called his “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, a day after the Russian president said he would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Putin announced the move on Saturday and likened it to the US stationing its weapons in Europe, while insisting that Russia would not violate its nuclear non-proliferation promises.

Although the move was not unexpected, it is one of Russia’s most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, and Ukraine called for a meeting of the UN Security Council in response.

While Washington, the world’s other nuclear superpower, played down concerns about Putin’s announcement, NATO said the Russian president’s non-proliferation pledge and his description of US weapons deployment overseas were way off the mark.

“Russia’s reference to NATO’s nuclear sharing is totally misleading. NATO allies act with full respect of their international commitments,” a NATO spokesperson said in emailed comments to Reuters on Sunday.

“Russia has consistently broken its arms control commitments, most recently suspending its participation in the New START Treaty,” the unnamed spokesperson said.

New START caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

A top security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Oleksiy Danilov, said Russia’s plan would also destabilise Belarus, which he said had been taken “hostage” by Moscow.

Experts said Russia’s move was significant since it had until now been proud that unlike the United States, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders. It may be the first time since the mid-1990s that it has done so.

Washington appeared to see no change in the potential for Moscow to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, and it and NATO said the news would not affect their own nuclear position.

Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the risk of escalation to nuclear war “remains extremely low”.

But the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons called Putin’s announcement an extremely dangerous escalation.

Putin said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long requested the deployment. There was no immediate reaction from Lukashenko.

Putin on Sunday also denied Moscow was creating a military alliance with Beijing and instead asserted that Western powers are building a new “axis” similar to the partnership between Germany and Japan during World War Two.

This was a reprisal of a theme he has often used in his portrayal of the Ukraine war – that Moscow is fighting a Ukraine in the grip of supposed Nazis, abetted by Western powers menacing Russia.

On the battlefield, Russian forces hit military targets in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, causing significant Ukrainian casualties, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday.

Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russian forces had also destroyed two apartment buildings in a missile strike on the eastern city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region. He said there were no casualties.

Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had repelled 85 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours across the eastern front, including the Bakhmut area, the scene of brutal fighting in the last few months.

Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.