TSEL, Belarus (Reuters) – An adviser to the Belarus defence minister on Friday refused to confirm or deny whether Russian tactical nuclear weapons were stored at a facility at Osipovichi in central Belarus.
“Perhaps the CIA thinks that; I don’t know what that’s based on,” Leonid Kasinsky said when asked by Reuters if the weapons were stored at an installation east of Osipovichi.
“No one is ever going to tell you where the tactical nuclear weapons are stationed – you should understand that.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko have said that Russia has already transferred some tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in what Putin called a move to deter the West from attempting to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.
Nuclear analysts at the Federation of American Scientists said on June 30 that new satellite images showed the construction of a double-fenced security perimeter at a weapons depot near Osipovichi. They said Osipovichi was the deployment area for Iskander SS-26 missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, that Russia supplied to Belarus in 2022.
However, they said they could not confirm at this point that the site was “intended for or will definitively be used to store Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus”.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Writing by Alexander Marrow and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
