NATO criticises Putin for ‘irresponsible’ nuclear rhetoric

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

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

The plan is one of Russia's clearest 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.

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

Russia is totally wrong about NATO's nuclear sharing. Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokesman, said in emailed comments to Reuters on Sunday that NATO allies act with full respect of their international commitments.

Russia has broken its arms control commitments, Lungescu said.

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

Experts said Russia's move was significant because 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.

Mykhailo Podolyak, another senior Zelenskyy adviser, scoffed at Putin's plan on Twitter.

He admits that he is afraid of losing all he can do is scare with tactics, according to Podolyak.

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

We have not seen any changes in Russia's nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own, NATO spokeswoman Lungescu wrote.

Tactical nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains on a battlefield rather than those with the capacity to wipe out cities. It is not clear how many such weapons Russia has, given that it is an area still shrouded in Cold War secrecy.

After Putin announced, Ukraine's foreign ministry called for an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council, and asked the international community to take decisive measures to prevent Russia's use of nuclear weapons.

Russia confirms its inability to be a responsible steward of nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence and prevention of war, not as a tool of threats and intimidation. The European Union sounded a chorus of condemnation on Sunday, with foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urging Belarus not to host the weapons and threatening further sanctions.

Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the risk of nuclear war remains extremely low In Washington, Representative Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, said he viewed Russia's plan as disturbing and designed to intimidate the West.

I think this is a saber-rattling on the part of Putin to try to frighten, McCaul told the Fox News Sunday program.