Putin aims to match US nukes in Europe with his own in Belarus; Pyongyang hatches its own ‘radioactive tsunami’

(Originally published March 27 in “What in the World“) As Ukraine plans a major counteroffensive against Russia’s invading forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin sparked a chorus of protests in the West by saying he might put tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus by this summer.

The weapons would remain under Russian control, not Belorussian. Putin suggested the move was a response to Britain’s decision to supply Ukraine with armor-piercing ammunition made from depleted uranium and justified it as no different than the longstanding U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe. A facility for storing the warheads will be ready by July, he said, and 10 Belorussian warplanes have been modified to carry them.

The U.S. has for decades had B-61 nuclear bombs stored at airbases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Washington created controversy last October by saying it would respond to Putin’s growing threat by upgrading them to more accurate B-61-12s, which can be dropped by either bombers of fighter jets. Russia was at the time conducting nuclear drills after Putin threatened nuclear attack against any country intervening in Ukraine.

Given Belorussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s reported reluctance to serve as host a second time for Russian forces invading Ukraine, it wasn’t yet clear whether Lukashenko had approved the deployment, requested it as Putin alluded, or whether Putin was bluffing or had simply taken Lukashenko’s approval as moot.

Russia used Belarus as a staging point for its initial invasion, but since then reports that Russia would launch a new offensive from Ukraine’s northern border haven’t materialized, despite Russia’s shift of forces there last December to take part in joint military exercises that were thought to presage just that. Minsk has been such a close ally of Moscow’s that some might be surprised that the surprise to some might be that Russia didn’t already have nukes there.

Tensions between the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia on one side and China, Russia, Iran and North Korea on the other have triggered an arms race in the Pacific on a scale not seen since the run-up to Japan’s invasion of China and Southeast Asia. In the latest example, North Korea said last Friday it had developed an undersea, nuclear-capable drone similar to Russia’s nuclear torpedoes capable of creating what Pyongyang hailed as a “radioactive tsunami.”

The drone test follows a flurry of launches that have included ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles. Pyongyang followed those up today by lobbing two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan.