The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Monday that the military will conduct exercises with tactical nuclear weapons – marking the first time that such an exercise has been publicly announced by Moscow, the Independent reports.
Nuclear weapons Russia. PHOTO Shutterstock (Archive)
Compared to nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can reduce entire cities to rubble, tactical nuclear weapons used against soldiers on the battlefield are less powerful and can have a yield of only one kiloton. The American bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II had a power of 15 kilotons.
Such battlefield nuclear weapons – aerial bombs, short-range missile warheads or artillery shells – can be very compact. Their small size allows them to be carried discreetly in a truck or plane.
Unlike strategic weapons, which have been the subject of arms control agreements signed between Moscow and Washington, tactical weapons have never been limited by such pacts, and Russia has not made public their numbers or any other details about them.
What Vladimir Putin said about nuclear weapons
Since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded Western nations of Moscow’s nuclear power in an attempt to dissuade them from stepping up military support for Kiev.
At the start of the war, the Kremlin leader made frequent references to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, repeatedly promising to use “all means” necessary to protect Russia. But he later tempered his remarks as Ukraine’s offensive last summer fell short of its goals and Russia made more gains on the battlefield.
Moscow’s defense doctrine envisages a nuclear response to a nuclear attack or even an attack with conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the Russian state”. That vague wording has led some pro-Kremlin Russian experts to urge Putin to clarify it to force the West to take the warnings more seriously.
Putin said last fall that he saw no reason for such a change.
“There is no situation in which something could threaten Russian statehood and the existence of the Russian state“, he said. “I think no rational person with a healthy memory could have the idea of using nuclear weapons against Russia.”
Why Russia sent nuclear weapons to Belarus
A year ago, Moscow moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of Minsk, an ally that borders Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has long urged Moscow to station nuclear weapons in his country, which has close military ties to Russia and served as a springboard for the war in Ukraine.
Both Putin and Lukashenko said the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus was intended to counter Western threats. Also a year ago, Putin specifically referred to the British Government’s decision to supply Ukraine with armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium.
Neither leader said how many weapons had been moved, only that Soviet-era facilities in the country had been prepared to house them and that Belarusian pilots and pilot teams had been trained to use them. The weapons remained under Russian military control.
Deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which shares a 1,084-kilometer border with Ukraine, would allow Russian jets and missiles to more easily and quickly reach potential targets in that country, should Moscow decide to use them. It also expanded Russia’s ability to target more NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe.
