Russian political commentator and president of the Russian Middle East Institute Yevgeny Satanovsky made the warning in a clip that has gone viral.
This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday, June 9, that he would begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 7-8, days before a NATO summit in neighboring Lithuania on whether the NATO will send troops to Ukraine.
“The question is, will it all go nuclear or not? Because if it continues like this, nuclear war will definitely happen”, Satanovsky said on Russian state television.
And it will not be tactical but strategic nuclear weapons that we will hit Ukraine, the United States of America and all the targets that should be in the crosshairs, believe me!The targets have been there since the time of the Soviet Union and are in the US, Europe and other places where US nuclear weapons are concentrated, where there are US military bases.
“So I wish on the way to the nuclear phase we could finish off the enemy without crossing the Rubicon. But if we must, what can we do?”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian commentators and officials have said the Kremlin was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the conflict. In April 2023, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, said that the possibility of using nuclear weapons described as the backbone that holds the state together was increasing by the day.
Medvedev, who was Putin’s permanent president between 2008 and 2012 and now serves as deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, has frequently issued nuclear threats.
“In my opinion, climate change concerns are nothing compared to the prospect of being at the center of an explosion with a temperature of 5,000 Kelvin (scale), a shock wave of 350 meters per second, and a pressure of 3,000 kilograms per second square meter, with penetrating radiation, meaning ionizing radiation and electromagnetic pulse, he said at a training event in late April, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. Is there such a prospect today? Unfortunately yes. And it’s increasing every day for obvious reasons”, he said.
Previously, in January, he said in a Telegram post discussing NATO’s support for Ukraine’s military: The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war.
Lukashenko says his country has begun receiving Russian tactical nuclear weapons
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had begun receiving Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped by the US in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The deployment is the first time Moscow has moved such nuclear warheads – shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The move is being watched closely by the United States and its allies, as well as China, which has repeatedly warned against using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.
“We have missiles and bombs that we received from Russia,” Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian state broadcaster Rossiya-1, which was broadcast by Belarusian state news agency Belta’s channel on the Telegram app.
The bombs are three times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he added.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said yesterday, Tuesday, that nuclear weapons would be deployed “within a few days” on Belarusian soil and that he has the facilities to install longer-range missiles if ever needed.
Putin had said on Friday that Russia, which will retain control of the tactical nuclear weapons it will deploy in Belarus, will begin deploying them after special facilities are ready to store them.
Lukashenko said in the same interview on Russian state television, which aired late Tuesday night, that his country has numerous nuclear storage facilities left over from the Soviet era and has renovated five or six of them.
Lukashenko, who allowed his country to be used by Russian forces that attacked Ukraine as part of what Moscow calls its “special military operation,” has said the development of those nuclear weapons would act as a deterrent to those who might want to to attack Belarus.
Belarus borders three NATO member countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
