Minsk. June 10. INTERFAX - Washington does not see any signs that there is a threat of nuclear war due to the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on CNN.
"We are doing everything we can to monitor what is happening," he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. And he added that "we do not see anything that would indicate to us the inevitable signs of nuclear potential displacement or the imminent risk of nuclear war on the territory of Ukraine or the (European - "IF") continent as a whole."
"We have not seen anything that would force us to change our position of deterrence when it comes to these kinds of probabilities," Kirby stressed.
At the same time, the representative of the National Security Council called the statements about the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus another "example of reckless and irresponsible rhetoric", which the United States "should take seriously."
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the transfer of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus will begin after July 7-8, when the construction of facilities for it will be completed.
At the end of March this year, Putin announced an agreement with Lukashenko on the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
The President of the Russian Federation noted that the Iskander missile system, which can be a carrier of tactical nuclear weapons, has been transferred to Belarus.
On May 25, in Minsk, the heads of the military departments of the Russian Federation and Belarus, Sergei Shoigu and Viktor Khrenin, signed documents defining the procedure for keeping Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons in a special storage facility on Belarusian territory. "Russia does not transfer nuclear weapons to the Republic of Belarus: control over them and the decision to use them remains with the Russian side," Shoigu said then in Minsk.
According to official information, the Iskander-M tactical missile system was developed at the Kolomna Machine-building Design Bureau (High-Precision Complexes Holding, Rostec State Corporation). It was reported that the missiles of the complex can carry a nuclear warhead. In the variant for the Russian army, the complex includes two types of missiles: ballistic and cruise.
On April 26, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that the Belarusian military, during training in the Russian Federation, studied in detail the use of tactical special ammunition of the Iskander-M missile system.
Special tactical ammunition is called for the Iskander-M complex with a nuclear warhead.
