“There is nothing unusual here: the United States has been doing this for decades: it has been deploying tactical nuclear weapons for a long time on the territory of its allies,” Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russian television.
“We have decided to do the same,” he added, assuring that he had the approval of the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarus shares borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, three EU and NATO countries.
Referring to the question of howitzers depleted uranium Putin stressed that Russia has a considerable arsenal of such weapons.
“Russia, of course, has what to respond with. We have, without exaggeration, tens of thousands of such shells. So far we have not used them,” he said.
British Deputy Defense Minister Annabel Goldi said on Monday her country plans to supply Ukraine with “depleted uranium” shells, which are “very effective in destroying modern tanks and armored vehicles.”
The British anti-nuclear organization Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament warned the next day that its use would cause an “additional environmental and health disaster for those at the center of the conflict” in Ukraine.
The use of depleted uranium ammunition implies toxic risks for the military and the population of the areas where it is used.
They were used in the two Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003, as well as in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The Pentagon also acknowledged that it used depleted uranium shells twice in 2015 in operations against the Islamic State group in Syria.