U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine are “real.” The comments come only days after Russia deployed its first tactical nuclear weapon to Belarus, fulfilling a commitment made earlier in the year.
Speaking to donors in California this week, the U.S. president compared Russia’s nuclear threats to the possibility of the Colorado river “drying up.”
“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden said. “They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real.”
Russian Nukes Arrive In Belarus
Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, June 16, Vladimir Putin announced that the first Russian nuclear weapons had arrived in Belarus some three months after he announced plans to deploy weapons in the country.
“The first nuclear charges were delivered to the territory of Belarus, but only the first,” Putin said. “This is the first part, but by the end of the summer, by the end of the year, we will complete this work.”
The comments come after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Wednesday, June 14, that his country had begun accepting nuclear weapons from Russia that were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States in 1945.
“We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia,” the Belarusian leader told the Rossiya-1 Russian state television channel. “The bombs are three times more powerful than those (used in) Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Lukashenko continued.
The arrival of the weapons indicates that the new storage facilities that Putin promised would be constructed in the country are now ready, and the deployment of these weapons is a clear sign from Russia that continued support for Ukraine’s defense by Western countries may ultimately be met with a nuclear response.
The arrival of Russian nukes in Belarus also comes as Ukraine’s counteroffensive begins to pay dividends, with Ukrainian forces making gains in southeastern Ukraine.
On June 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a video update on Twitter, declaring that his soldiers in the southern and eastern regions of the country are “very actively destroying the enemy” and “physically clearing” Ukraine of Russian soldiers.
Now our warriors in the south and in the east are very actively destroying the enemy, physically clearing ????????. This will continue in the future.
Protection against terror means the destruction of terrorists. And it is a guarantee that the ???????? evil state will never again have the… pic.twitter.com/eCG7ac5xds
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 20, 2023
“This will continue into the future,” Zelenskyy continued.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
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