After the Russian announcement that it would station nuclear weapons in Belarus, the United Nations warned of an escalation. “All states must avoid measures that could lead to escalations, mistakes or misjudgments,” said the UN commissioner for disarmament issues, Izumi Nakamitsu, today before the UN Security Council in New York.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons must also be observed. “The risk of using nuclear weapons is now at its highest since the cold war troughs.”
Against the background of high tensions with the West as a result of the Ukraine war, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin recently announced that tactical nuclear weapons would be stationed in the neighboring ex-Soviet republic of Belarus. Putin justified the deployment by saying that the US had been doing something similar in Europe for years.
