How concerning is Putin's latest nuclear threat?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is raising the prospect of nuclear war in Ukraine. Putin said over the weekend he would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus. Unlike a traditional nuclear warhead, tactical nukes are relatively short-range and are not restricted by any existing arms treaties. Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday and reiterated concerns about the Zaparicia nuclear power plant. Intermittent fighting with Russia has threatened the single power source that currently is preventing a catastrophic meltdown at the plant. Let's bring in Ali Hainounan. He's a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for having me, yeah. Why would Putin flirt with moving tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus and how much of an escalation is this in your mind? Well, in certain way it is because it goes against the earlier agreements from early 1990s that all these weapons will be removed from that part of the world and from Ukraine, from Belarusia and Kazakhstan. That was the deal. And now he goes back and brings them there in order to threaten the other parties. And it's a part of his longer-term plan because at the same time he talks about making this buffered zone between Russian Federation and then the Western world. So he's probably now thinking of putting them to Belarusia, but he may not stop there because there may be some other spots when you go from there all the way to Caucasus where he may want to place it.

So we need to take seriously this thing. And so the tactical nuclear weapons are really not necessarily in your mind about Ukraine. It's about this buffer zone about NATO. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And it makes it a little bit more difficult for NATO even if they are not used because the delivery time for those weapons is very short. If you activate them, they will be in few minutes, let's say in Germany or in France. So it's a serious threat.

But at the same time, the threshold of using them is very high. We have seen it, for example, in North Korea or in South Korea on that part of the world. If Putin were, and also we should remind people that Putin has made a lot of threats and this is part of what he does, threats that don't then turn into action. But if it were to turn into action, how long would it take for him to move tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus and for them to become actually operational? If we believe what he has said, he says that the pace will be there in the beginning of July, which is few months away. Belarusian president said today that they have 10 airplanes which are already fit for carrying those weapons. So it doesn't take very long. So it will take a matter of months or weeks if he wants to rush.

And the US has tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Yes. And so Putin, this also allows him to continue saying, wait a minute, we're just responding to a threat that the West has put on our doorstep. That threat has been there since 1960. So this is a new, not new threat, but this one is what he thinks. And let's remember a little bit history. Russia has about 2,000 of them.

And where they were, actually they were distributed all over the Soviet Union along the borders, but very many of them were kept at the Chinese border. Now I think that after this cozy relation, maybe he has now possibilities to move them from there, actually, to the West. You mentioned China. President Xi and Putin met, and they created a, they issued a document in which they said neither of them would move nuclear weapons outside of their country. And then now immediately after they put out that document, Putin is talking about moving them to Belarus. Yeah, that was not the signed agreement and Biden agreement. And this actually has been Chinese positions since early this year.

You remember that there was also talk about, by some people that the US should place some of the tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea to be as a deterrent against the North. And US has been very reluctant to move anything like that there. And China has been vehemently against it and made a lot of statements that one should not go to this kind of old NATO type of approach in Southeast Asia or East Asia. So this goes quite a lot against the opinions of the Chinese. Right, Al-Ihannun. And thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Olli Heinonen, Vladimir Putin, russia, ukraine, nukes, nucelar threat, nuclear, tactical nuclear weapons, china, xi, john dickerson