President Joe Biden warned this week that the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real,” days after Moscow announced that the first warheads have arrived in Belarus amid international condemnation of the move.
“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado River drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday. “They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real.”
Biden’s latest comment on the development comes days after he addressed reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, saying Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed nuclear warheads in Belarus was “absolutely irresponsible.”
Last week, Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus has begun. Some of the warheads are expected to be three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II in 1945.
“As you know, we were negotiating with our ally—Belarusian President Lukashenko—that we would move a part of these tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of Belarus—this has happened,” Putin said on June 16 while speaking at an economic forum in St. Petersburg. “The first nuclear warheads were delivered to the territory of Belarus. But only the first ones, the first part. But we will do this job completely by the end of the summer or by the end of the year.”
The move marks Moscow’s first deployment of such tactical nuclear warheads—shorter-range, less powerful nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield—outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
Putin first described plans to deploy the nuclear warheads in Belarus in March, pointing to U.S. deployment of similar weapons at NATO bases in a number of European countries over many decades. The announcement comes amid top Kremlin officials repeatedly threatening the possibility of using nuclear weapons as the war in Ukraine goes on.
Stark Warning
The Russian deployment is being watched closely by the United States and its allies, as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
Last autumn, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom warned Russia that if it used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the trio would retaliate with a conventional strike.
The United States also said last month that it has no intention of altering its stance on strategic nuclear weapons in response to the deployment, noting it has not seen any signs that Russia is directly prepared to use a nuclear weapon. The United States said it “will continue to monitor, certainly, the implications” in Moscow and Minsk.
In May, Russia dismissed U.S. criticism of its plan to move tactical nuclear weapons to its neighboring ally, saying Washington and its NATO allies have deployed nuclear weapons in NATO states for decades.
Lukashenko, meanwhile, recently described the deployment as a unique chance for Belarus and Russia to unite, saying the deployment of nuclear weapons in his country will boost its security and act as a deterrent against potential aggressors.
“[The deployment] was my demand. It wasn’t Russia who imposed it on me. Why? Because no one in the world has ever gone to war with a nuclear power. And I don’t want anyone to go to war with us. Is there such a threat? There is. I must neutralize that threat,” Lukashenko said, according to the Belarusian news outlet BelTA.
Putin reiterated Lukashenko’s comments last week, insisting that the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus will act as “an element of deterrence” to all powers who are “thinking about inflicting a strategic defeat.”
“Nuclear weapons have been made to ensure our security in the broadest sense of the word and the existence of the Russian state, but we … have no such need [to use them],” the 70-year-old Russian leader said.
Neither Putin nor Lukashenko has revealed how many tactical nuclear weapons would be moved to Belarus, which borders Ukraine, as well as Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, which are members of NATO.
According to data from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Russia accounts for the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world. Out of the 12,700 warheads worldwide, 5,977 are Russia’s, followed closely by the United States’ 5,428.
Reuters contributed to this report.