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Activists say President Vladimir Putin’s decision to deploy Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus will have dire consequences. Photo/REUTERS
MOSCOW – Presidential Announcement Vladimir Putin that Russia will deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus could have catastrophic consequences.
That was conveyed by activists from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Susi Snyder.
“This increases the risk of using nuclear weapons by adding more actors, potentially having the capability to drop a nuclear bomb, and creating the potential for chaos and miscommunication,” Snyder told Al Jazeera Monday (27/3/2023).
“These weapons, if used, will have the same or greater effect than what we saw on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. They can cause catastrophic consequences,” he said.
ICAN, in a statement, condemned what it called a dangerous escalation that made the use of nuclear weapons more likely.
ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to achieve a universal ban on nuclear weapons.
“Given the Ukrainian conflict, the possibility of miscalculation or misinterpretation is very high. Sharing nuclear weapons makes the situation much worse and risks disastrous humanitarian consequences,” the activist organization said.
ICAN also noted that harboring other countries’ atomic weapons is prohibited under the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However, this framework was never signed by Belarus, Russia, China, or any of the Western nuclear powers.
In 2017, the United States (US), Britain and France claimed that the initiative clearly ignored the realities of the international security environment, while Russia said the initiative was against its national interests.
