Photo: Grigory Sysoyev / Sputnik / Kremlin pool / EPA-EFE

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has said that “several dozen” Russian nuclear warheads are already deployed in his country, state-owned news agency BELTA reported on Tuesday.

“I have brought nuclear warheads here. … Many people are writing: ‘It’s a joke. No one has moved anything anywhere.’ They have. The fact they think it’s a joke means they’ve been asleep on the job. They didn’t even notice us bringing them in,” he said.

Lukashenko said the authorities were now deliberating over where to station the Oreshnik ballistic missiles which Vladimir Putin promised to deliver “in the second half of 2025” during a joint press conference with Lukashenko in Minsk on Friday.

That announcement followed the signing of a new security pact between the two allied states that included “mutual defence commitments to protect the sovereignty, independence and constitutional order” of Russia and Belarus, state-owned news agency TASS reported.

Lukashenko said the weapons may be stationed at sites where strategic nuclear missiles had previously been stored.

Putin said at the end of March 2023 that he was planning to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, with Lukashenko alleging in June 2023 that a significant number of nuclear warheads had already arrived in the country, though there has never been any independent confirmation of this.

Belarus acceded to the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1993. The withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the country was completed in November 1996.