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Changes announced by Russia to its nuclear weapons policy should have been made long ago and will probably "calm the zeal" of Western opponents, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview published on Sunday.
Mr Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said "hot minds" in the West had already picked up on nuclear signals being sent from Moscow before the Kremlin leader announced the changes last month.
Russian President Putin said on September 25 that Russia was expanding the list of scenarios that could lead it to consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons, including in cases where there is credible information about a massive cross-border attack by means of such aircraft, missiles and drones. He said that Moscow would consider an attack supported by a nuclear power as an attack carried out jointly with the attacking country.
The announcement was the Kremlin's response to discussions in the United States and Britain over whether to give Ukraine permission to use Western-supplied conventional missiles to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.
"This doctrine should have been restored a long time ago," said Mr. Lukashenko, who agreed with Russian President Putin last year to deploy Russia's tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil.
Mr Lukashenko told a Russian television reporter that Western missiles "would already be hitting us, Russia in particular", if the West had not heeded Mr Putin's earlier nuclear signals. But the change in nuclear doctrine "perhaps calms their zeal a little," he added.
Ukraine has accused Russia of nuclear blackmail. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the West not to pay attention to the "red lines" of Russian President Putin. Moscow says its warnings are real and Mr Putin has said the US and its allies would be fighting Russia directly if they gave Kiev the green light to strike deep into Russia with US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles. ./ VOA
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