On Wednesday, the Kremlin rejected NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s criticism of deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters that Russia had to protect itself because the U.S.-led transatlantic alliance was advancing toward Russia.
On Wednesday, Stoltenberg claimed Russia’s decision contradicted a previous Russian-Chinese agreement against nuclear weapons deployment abroad.
“It is NATO that is expanding towards Russia, not Russia that is taking its military infrastructure towards the borders of NATO,” Peskov said on Thursday when asked to respond to Stoltenberg’s remarks.
With Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine last year, Finland and Sweden joined NATO on Tuesday, extending the alliance’s land boundary with Russia.
Russia warned it would monitor NATO military deployments to Finland and retaliate.
“We are taking precautions due to this migration. Every time NATO approaches our borders to rebalance continental security, “Peskov remarked.
On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Moscow to discuss Russia’s nuclear weapons deployment.
Putin said storage facilities should be finished by July, but Russia has not set a date for deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.
It will be Russia’s first overseas nuclear deployment since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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