“Kommersant”: experts are trying to determine where to store nuclear weapons in Belarus 04:09

Experts are trying to establish possible places on the territory of Belarus where a storage facility for Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be installed. The newspaper writes about it “Kommersant” With reference to Jeffrey Lewis, program director of the James Martin Center for Nuclear Non-Proliferation Studies (USA).

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the construction of a storage facility for placing nuclear warheads on the territory of Belarus will be completed on July 1 this year.

Lewis, an expert in open source intelligence and satellite imagery, said his team is already researching the issue, that it is still difficult to determine what they should be looking at and whether warehouse construction has begun.

The program director of the center recalled that Soviet nuclear weapons were stored on the territory of Belarus until 1996, noting that in this context it could be not only the construction of a new facility, but also the modernization of the old complex.

Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Weapons project, a senior research fellow at the United Nations Institute, says it is unlikely that Soviet nuclear weapons storage facilities will be kept in a state that would allow them to be put in order any faster than a new one is built. For Disarmament Research. He noted that the modernization of such structures has already been carried out by Russia near Kaliningrad and Tver, as experts who studied satellite images reported. So it was seen in this case as well.

Podvig also stresses that it is “extremely difficult” to build a new storage facility in three months, and believes it is difficult to store such an object during the construction phase. The expert acknowledged that Moscow’s statement will at least send a political signal to the West and that it may not rush to place nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Former press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov declarationThat the reaction of Western countries to plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory cannot change Moscow’s intentions.