Russia has struck a deal with neighbouring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory, Tass news agency quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying on Saturday.
Such a move would not violate nuclear nonproliferation agreements, Putin said, adding that the United States had stationed nuclear weapons on the territory of European allies.
Russia has also moved 10 aircrafts to Belarus that are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, TASS reported.
Russia has already handed over to Belarus the Iskander complex, which can store nuclear weapons, Putin said in a Saturday interview on TV channel Rossiya-24.
According to Putin, his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko has long raised the issue of deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which have not been present there since the early 1990s, when the USSR fell.
"We agreed with Lukashenko that we would place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime," Russian news agency TASS quoted Putin as saying.
The US has long placed such weapons in a number of countries, so there is nothing unusual in Belarus' request, Putin added.
Russia will have completed the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July 1 and the control of arms will not be transferred to Minsk, Putin added.
Since Russia started the war in neighboring Ukraine 13 months ago, Western leaders and commentators have raised concerns that Moscow might make the conflict nuclear, often based on statements by the Russia side seen by the West as saying that all options are on the table.
