MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that countries need to gather nuclear weapons "into one pile and destroy" them at some point. .
"I am radically-minded in this respect in general. I believe that nuclear weapons need to be piled up at some point and destroyed," Lukashenko said on the ‘Moscow. Kremlin. Putin’ program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, a fragment of which journalist and host Pavel Zarubin posted on his Telegram channel.
Lukashenko stressed that he agreed with what French President Emmanuel Macron said about the inadmissibility of one country placing nuclear weapons on the territory of another, but then the US should also remove them from other countries.
"Everybody is an armchair critic, like this guy; so let's pile together all the nuclear weapons and destroy them - that's the best option. In the meantime, we do as they do," Lukashenko said, commenting on Macron's statement and explaining the reasons for Russia's decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
On March 25, President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia, at Minsk’s request, would deploy its tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil, precisely the way the US has deployed its own nuclear arsenal on the territory of its allies. Moscow has already transferred the nuclear-capable Iskander system to Minsk. According to the Russian head of state, the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons within the borders of Belarus is scheduled to be completed by July 1.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that on April 3, Belarusian crews started training on how to use the system for the protection of the Union State at a Russian training range.