While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to station nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus is unlikely to change Europe’s strategic balance, it has put him at odds with a pledge he made with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping just days earlier.
Russia and China declared that "all nuclear weapons states should refrain from deploying nuclear weapons abroad” in a joint statement at the end of Xi’s visit to Moscow last week. Then Putin announced on state television late Saturday that Russia will place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse, even as he insisted the move wouldn’t breach Moscow’s nonproliferation commitments.
"Putin’s statement cast doubt on the outcome of his meeting with Xi,” said Tariq Rauf, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former nuclear nonproliferation director. "He seems to be nuclear signaling to a domestic audience, trying to reassure his own public that Russia is doing OK, that the war in Ukraine is going all right.”