Lukashenko offers a nuke free-for-all for any nation willing to join a Russia-Belarus union

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that if another country wants to join a Russo-Belarusian union, there could be “nuclear weapons for all.”

His thinly veiled threat to the West comes just days after Vladimir Putin transferred tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk, in Moscow’s first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The dictator, a staunch ally of Putin, said one “must understand strategically” that Minsk and Moscow have a unique opportunity to unite.

A ranting Lukashenko said on Sunday: “Nobody is against Kazakhstan and other countries that have the same close relations we have with the Russian Federation.

“If anyone is concerned… (then) it is very simple: join the Union State of Belarus and Russia. That’s all: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.’

Lukashenko added that it was his own opinion – not Russia’s opinion.

Russia and Belarus are formally part of a Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics.

Russia used the territory of Belarus as a launching pad for its invasion of their common neighbor Ukraine last February, and since then their military cooperation has intensified, with joint training exercises on Belarusian soil.

On Sunday, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said another unit of the S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile systems arrived from Moscow, with the systems soon to be ready for combat service.

It comes as Alexander Volfovich, secretary of state of the Belarusian Security Council, said that Western countries have left Belarus with no choice but to deploy tactical nuclear weapons and better ensure that they do not “cross red lines” on key strategic issues .

Volfovich said it made sense for the weapons to be withdrawn after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, since the United States had provided security guarantees and not imposed sanctions.

“Today everything is broken. All the promises made are gone forever,” the Belta Volfovich news agency quoted an interviewer on state television as saying.

Russia last week moved forward with a decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, aimed at achieving specific gains on the battlefield.

Russia says its “special military operation” in Ukraine was aimed at countering what it says is an urge by the “collective West” to wage a proxy war and defeat Moscow.

“The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus is therefore one of the steps of strategic deterrence. Of course, if there is any reason left in the minds of Western politicians, they will not cross this red line,” Volfovich said.

He said any recourse to the use of “even tactical nuclear weapons will lead to irreversible consequences.”

Lukashenko said last week that the weapons were already on their way, but it is not yet clear when they will be in place.

The United States has denounced the future use of nuclear weapons in Belarus, but says its position on the use of such weapons has not changed.

Long before the invasion, Belarus was subject to Western sanctions related to Lukashenko’s crackdown on human rights, particularly the suppression of mass protests against what his detractors say was his rigged 2020 reelection.

After independence from the Soviet government, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan agreed to have their weapons removed and returned to Russia as part of international efforts to contain proliferation.