BELARUS: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that if any other country wanted to join a Russia-Belarus union there could be “nuclear weapons for everyone.”
Russia moved ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, spurring concerns in the West.
In an interview published on Russia’s state television late on Sunday, Lukashenko, President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest ally among Russia’s neighbors, said that it must be “strategically understood” that Minsk and Moscow have a unique chance to unite.
“No one is against Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation,” Lukashenko said.
“If someone is worried ... (then) it is very simple: join in the Union State of Belarus and Russia. That’s all: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone.”
He added that it was his own view — not the view of Russia.
Russia and Belarus are formally part of a Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics.
Russia used the territory of Belarus as a launchpad for its invasion of their common neighbor Ukraine in February last year, and since then their military cooperation has intensified, with joint training exercises on Belarusian soil.
On Sunday, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said that another unit of the S-400 mobile, surface-to-air missile systems arrived from Moscow, with the systems to be ready for combat duty soon.
Belarus’s Lukashenko says there can be ‘nuclear weapons for everyone’
https://arab.news/c85ym
Belarus’s Lukashenko says there can be ‘nuclear weapons for everyone’
- Russia moved ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus
Trump ‘very disappointed’ with UK’s Starmer for blocking use of air bases, Telegraph says
- UK PM then said bases could be used in “defensive” operations
- Trump says it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind
LONDON: Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not allowing the US to use the Diego Garcia air base to carry out strikes on Iran, the Daily Telegraph quoted the US president as saying in an interview.
Britain had reportedly initially denied the US permission to conduct air strikes from its bases, but on Sunday evening Starmer said he was accepting a request for their use in any “defensive” strikes the US wanted to make against Iranian targets.
In an interview published on Monday Trump told the British newspaper that it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind.
“That’s probably never happened between our countries before,” he told the Telegraph, adding: “It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
Trump said Starmer should have approved from the get-go the American use of Diego Garcia — a strategically important US-UK air base in the Indian Ocean — saying Iran was responsible for killing “a lot of people from your country.”
Britain was not involved in the joint US-Israel air strikes on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
Since attacks on Iran started on Saturday, Iran has been targeting Gulf countries with missiles, and on Sunday an Iranian-made drone hit Britain’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus, causing limited damage and no casualties.
Trump said it was “useful” that the US would now be able to launch operations from Diego Garcia, as he also criticized a deal Starmer has made over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, where Diego Garcia is based.
