Putin's Nuclear Crisis - April 2023

The chairman of the commission on international affairs and national security of the upper house of the Belarusian parliament, Sergei Rachkov , said 01 April 2023 that the decision to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus does not violate Minsk's international obligations and is a deterrent against encroachments on the territorial integrity of the republic. This is a serious step on the part of Belarus and Russia . I want to emphasize that the Republic of Belarus does not violate its international obligations in this area," Rachkov said in an interview with the Belarus 1 TV channel.

He also drew attention to the fact that "when, within the framework of the Budapest Memorandum, Belarus withdrew (Soviet - ed.) nuclear weapons from its territory, it was given serious guarantees in the field of security."

“Today we see how the geopolitical and overall strategic situation in the world and around Belarus and its borders is changing. The head of state cannot but react to the changed situation. This step is a very serious deterrent for those who have any thoughts regarding territorial integrity of the Republic of Belarus," the senator added.

Some aircraft of the Belarusian Air Force were converted to nuclear weapons, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said 04 April 2023 at a meeting with the command of the Armed Forces. "Some of the Belarusian ground attack aircraft received the ability to strike at enemy targets with nuclear weapons." In addition, the Belarusian army was given the Iskander-M complex, which can use nuclear missiles. The Minister of Defense emphasized this is being done in response to an increase in the combat readiness of the combined forces of NATO and the intensification of intelligence activities of the alliance near the borders of Russia and Belarus.

In mid-October 2022, the deputy head of the Russian delegation at a meeting of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, Konstantin Vorontsov, noted that "we are talking exclusively about the transfer to the Republic of Belarus of dual-equipped Iskander-M systems with conventional missiles, as well as about giving part of the Belarusian Su-25 aircraft the technical ability to carry nuclear weapon." He stressed that there are no plans to transfer technologies for converting aircraft into nuclear weapons carriers to Belarus.

No country can deploy nuclear weapons on foreign soil, French President Emmanuel Macron said 06 April 2023 at a joint press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping. ""France believes that nuclear weapons should be completely excluded from the conflict in Ukraine. In no case can nuclear weapons be placed outside the territory of a nuclear power, especially in Europe," the head of state said. Russia's decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) in Belarus "is incomparable with its obligations under international law," the French leader argues. “China and France, as permanent members of the UN Security Council and nuclear powers, given their history of love and commitment to independence, should work together to maintain an international order that can meet the challenges of the times,” Macron added.

Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov reacted ironically to the words of French leader Emmanuel Macron about the inadmissibility of placing nuclear weapons of one country on the territory of another. "We haven't heard such fierce criticism from the President of France against the United States for a long time," he told Pavel Zarubin, a journalist for the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program on Rossiya 1 on 08 April 2023.

President of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Kovalchuk noted 08 April 2023 the high level of Russian nuclear weapons and said that the United States would have to catch up with Russia for a long time in this area and in the development of hypersonic technologies, in particular. The expert expressed this opinion speaking at an open lecture "Nature-like technologies and solving the problems of the modern world" at the Peter the Great Polytechnic University in St. Petersburg.

“Our military budget is less than 50 billion, while the Americans have more than 800 billion. <...> They don’t have hypersound, they don’t have a lot of things. We are absolutely ahead in the nuclear complex. We have always caught up with them, but today they won't catch up with us for a long time," the speaker concluded. Kovalchuk also stressed that the Americans could not determine the composition of the alloy from which the RD-180 rocket engines are made. "Until now, the Americans are buying our RD-180 rocket engines, <...> we have been selling them for many years. They disassemble it [the engine], assemble it, disassemble it, assemble it, but they cannot make metal," the head of the research center explained.

An international trial of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, similar to the Nuremberg military tribunal, will help avoid a nuclear war. This opinion was expressed by the Ukrainian opposition politician Viktor Medvedchuk in an article for aif.ru , published on 17 Apeil 2023. According to him, states that do not want "a repetition of the tragedy of Germany of the last century and today's Ukraine on their soil" should join forces and "conduct a trial following the example of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal", giving a legal assessment of the actions of the Zelensky regime, its predecessors and patrons. .

“Such a lawsuit will prevent the reincarnation of Nazism in other countries. Only by joint efforts, having cured Ukraine from the “brown plague” of Nazism, drawing conclusions on its example and punishing the perpetrators, humanity will be able to avoid a nuclear apocalypse, to which another Hitler can lead the planet, guided by its policy with the misanthropic ideas of Nazism," Medvedchuk said.

According to him, from 2005 to 2022, Western politicians and intelligence agencies, with the help of "comprador elites, transformed the mass consciousness of the Ukrainian people", making it an obedient tool for their geopolitical ambitions directed against Russia. Medvedchuk is convinced that this made it possible to disunite the united people, who lived in a united state only yesterday, and play them off in a civil war in the Donbass.

Vladimir Yermakov, Director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, was interviewed by TASS News Agency, April 25, 2023. "If the United States continues following its current path of confrontation with Russia, increasing the stakes for an armed conflict, the future of the Start Treaty could be predetermined. But if a worst-case scenario develops, that is, if Washington brings the situation to a military conflict between the world’s biggest nuclear powers, humanity will have to worry about the destiny of the entire world instead of trying to save the START treaty.

"This confirms once again the fact that today the most acute threat is related not so much to the dynamics of incentives for a massive first strike, which agreements like the Start Treaty were largely designed to curb, as to the danger of nuclear escalation stemming from a direct military confrontation between nuclear powers. To my deep regret, these risks are steadily growing."