Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his Belarusian counterpart Aleksandr Lukashenko to rebuild Belarusian Air Force fighter jets so that they can carry nuclear weapons. “This modernization can be done in Russian factories,” Putin said after Lukashenko asked for it in a TV interview.
Putin also pledged to equip Belarus within months with Iskander missile systems, which have a range of 500 kilometers and can be equipped with normal weapons or nuclear warheads.
Lukashenko said in the TV interview that he was concerned about the “aggressive”, “confrontational” and “abhorrent” policies of neighboring Lithuania and Poland. Since this week, EU member state Lithuania has been blocking goods that fall under European sanctions and are sent from Russia via Belarus and Lithuania to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
According to Lukashenko, NATO would also carry out flights near the Belarusian border where the planes carry nuclear weapons. He therefore asked Putin for a “symmetrical response”. “Minsk must prepare for all possibilities, even the use of serious weapons to defend our homeland from Brest to Vladivostok,” the president said. Vladivostok is located in the far east of Russia, Brest in the far southwest of Belarus.
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