Answering the corresponding question at a press conference after the meeting of the Sherpas and sous-sherpas of the Brics group in Moscow, the deputy foreign minister assured that Russia is acting with the utmost responsibility when it comes to placing nuclear weapons in Belarus.

According to Riyabkov, these activities are carried out in the context of the Union State of Russia and Belarus which ‘has a common security space’.

Reasoning in this regard about the joint nuclear missions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he reminded that these ‘are carried out on the territories and airspaces of countries, which declared themselves free of nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

‘Now the Western group and its ‘ringleaders’, in particular the United States, want to apply this practice to the Asia-Pacific region,’ he warned.

In March 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow and Minsk agreed to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, without violating international commitments.

According to the Russian leader, this is not a transfer of nuclear weapons to the neighboring nation, which would be a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but their emplacement.

He also recalled that the United States has for years been stationing nuclear weapons in various countries within the NATO framework, including Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye.

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