Moscow will finish building a facility for tactical arms in the neighboring country by July, the Russian president has said
Russian tactical nuclear weapons might arrive in Belarus as early as this summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on Saturday. Moscow is completing the construction of a specialized storage facility for such arms, amid repeated calls by Minsk to deploy them on its soil, he added.
The site in Belarus will be ready by July 1, Putin told Russia 24 TV. The president also said that Moscow does not plan to hand over control of any tactical nuclear weapons to Minsk and that it would only deploy its own arms to Belarus. He did not specify when exactly the weapons would be transported to the new site.
The move was prompted by the UK’s decision to provide Kiev with depleted uranium munitions, Putin explained. The UK announced earlier in March that it plans to send the shells to Ukraine for use with Challenger 2 battle tanks. Moscow blasted the move as a sign of “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” on the part of London and Washington.
The US dismissed Russia’s concerns by calling depleted uranium shells a “commonplace type of munition” that has “been in use for decades.” The Russian Defense Ministry then warned that their use could trigger nothing short of a radioactive disaster in Ukraine, citing the aftermath of the use of such munitions by NATO in Iraq.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly raised the issue of threats posed to his nation by nuclear weapons deployed by the US to EU countries. In October 2022, he pointed to “nuclear sharing” talks between Washington and Warsaw, warning that nuclear weapons could be placed in Poland, which borders Belarus.
Minsk needs to take “appropriate measures” to address this threat, Lukashenko said at that time, adding that he would discuss the matter with Moscow.
Currently, US nuclear weapons are deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye. In 2021, Russia called on the weapons to be repatriated as part of its security proposals, but the US and NATO refused.
Any moment now I am expecting John Cleese (a veteran of Monty Python) to jump out of the bushes and announce the creation of the Ministry of Silly Wars, with Donald Trump as the deranged leader. For you youngsters out there, Monty Python’s skit, The Ministry of Silly Walks, helped make the members of MP legends. I had to reference Monty Python because the line of bullshit the Trump administration is feeding the American people and the world about the amazing, obliterating US attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, is more ridiculous that all of the silly walks pictured in the following video:
My hopes that Donald Trump would finally act like a responsible adult are dashed. He’s a dangerous buffoon. While the team around him are working frantically to maintain the fiction that Trump has a vision and is calling the shots on the foreign policy front, he is careening around the globe like an out-of-control cue ball on a billiards table. It started a week ago… first, he claimed...
Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the launch of the Fujian, China's first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults. Official media said China is about to enter a three-aircraft-carrier era, with the Fujian expected to enter service by 2025.
After the launch of the Fujian on June 17, 2022, it carried out its first sea trial from May 1 to 8 in 2024. Since then, the Fujian has completed multiple sea trials, accumulating more than 100 days of sea trial, China Central Television (CCTV) News reported on Tuesday.
Wei Dongxu, a Chinese military affairs commentator, said that the aircraft carrier Fujian has been making steady progress in sea trials, and is expected to be commissioned within this year, CCTV News reported.
With a full displacement of more than 80,000 tons, the Fujian is the world's first conventionally powered aircraft carrier to feature electromagnetic catapult technologies, according to CCTV News. The report noted that it will carry a wide variety of carrier-borne...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China and Central Asian countries have explored and formed the China-Central Asia Spirit, which features mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, mutual assistance, and the pursuit of common modernization through high-quality development.
Xi made the remarks in his speech at the second China-Central Asia Summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Xi said that the Chinese side has decided to establish three cooperation centers and a trade facilitation platform within the China-Central Asia cooperation mechanism.
When addressing the summit, Xi said these institutions include the China-Central Asia poverty reduction cooperation center, the China-Central Asia education exchange cooperation center, the China-Central Asia desertification control cooperation center, as well as the China-Central Asia trade facilitation cooperation....more below
