The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, dismissed Mr. Putin’s announcement as an “information operation” with little risk of escalation.
“Putin is attempting to exploit Western fears of nuclear escalation,” it said, adding that the group “continues to assess that Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through in order to break Western resolve.”
Mr. Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, said he still considered it unlikely that Russia would actually move nuclear warheads into Belarus, despite Mr. Putin’s latest comments.
Russian nuclear storage sites are so complex, Mr. Podvig said, that he doubted that a facility in Belarus could be ready to receive them by July. Even if Russia were to transfer weapons to Belarus, he added, the nuclear threat level would not substantially change.
“It’s not a positive development, of course, but as long as the weapons are in storage the threat is not immediate,” Mr. Podvig said. “Yes, theoretically, Russia can reach more targets from Belarus, but the change is marginal.”
Russia has as many as 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which have a lower yield than the strategic kind that are designed to attack cities, military bases and other targets far from the battlefield. A tactical nuclear weapon has never been used in combat, but one could be deployed in a number of ways, including by missile or artillery shell. Mr. Putin said in the interview that Russia had already transferred some nuclear-capable Iskander short-range missiles to Belarus, a step that Russia announced last summer.
In Belarus, Mr. Lukashenko did not immediately respond to Mr. Putin’s comments. But they drew swift condemnation from Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, an exiled Belarusian opposition leader. She said the deployment “grossly contradicts the will of the Belarusian people to assume the non-nuclear state status expressed in the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Belarus of 1990,” and “directly violates the Constitution.”
