Russia’s president stated at a gathering that they would be deployed only if Russia’s borders or state were threatened. According to the US government, there is no indication that the Kremlin intends to attack Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
“We don’t see any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in response to Mr Putin’s remarks.
Belarus is a significant Russian ally that served as a staging area for Mr Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February.
Mr Putin said transferring the tactical nuclear warheads would be completed by the end of the summer.
Answering questions after a speech at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s president said the move was about “containment” and to remind anyone “thinking of inflicting a strategic defeat on us”.
When asked by the forum’s moderator about the possibility of using those weapons, he replied: “Why should we threaten the whole world? I have already said that the use of extreme measures is possible in case there is a danger to Russian statehood.”
Tactical nuclear weapons are small nuclear warheads and delivery systems intended for use on the battlefield, or for a limited strike. They are designed to destroy enemy targets in a specific area without causing widespread radioactive fallout.
The smallest tactical nuclear weapons can be one kiloton or less (producing the equivalent to a thousand tonnes of the explosive TNT). The largest ones can be as big as 100 kilotons. By comparison, the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons.