Felshtinsky: Putin Wants To Move Nuclear Weapons To Belarus

Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania could become potential targets.

American historian of Russian origin Yuri Felshtinsky believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is developing a plan of a nuclear strike on Europe from the territory of Belarus.

He voiced this opinion in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Internet publication gordonua.com Alesa Batzman.

"I think that the reason why Belarus still hasn't been annexed or absorbed by the Russian Federation on a formal and legal level is that Putin wants to leave Belarus as a formally independent state in order to move nuclear weapons to Belarus and launch a nuclear attack against Europe from Belarus in the hope that retaliatory strikes will only hit Belarus and not Russia, or that they will be very difficult to conduct (if we mean thermonuclear retaliatory strikes) because Belarus is all too close to Europe. These strikes may lead to the spread of radiation outside Belarus," said Felshtinsky.

The journalist asked whether Lukashenka would go for it.

"I think Lukashenka has no independent role or voice here," said Felshtinsky.

In his opinion, as soon as Russia starts transferring nuclear weapons to Belarus, NATO will join the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.

"That moment, by all logic, must be the day when it becomes obvious that Russia starts transferring nuclear weapons to Belarus. Because if these weapons are deployed and installed, it will be too late to do anything. The start of redeployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus is actually the last moment when NATO will be obliged to enter this war with all its forces to prevent a thermonuclear scenario," said the historian.

He suggests that Russia may strike at three European countries - Ukraine, Poland or Lithuania, as evidenced by official statements from Russia and Belarus.

"On March 6, the [Russian state agency] TASS made a statement that according to information available to the Russian leadership, Ukraine has been working on the production of nuclear weapons since 2014. This is an absolute lie. This statement was not made by chance at all. It prepares the ground for, for example, the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons to Donbas and the shelling of Ukrainian territory from Donbas, which is, in general, also Ukraine. And in this case we will also hear Russian leaders claiming that the Ukrainians are shelling themselves in order to compromise Russia. At about the same time, I think a couple of days after the TASS statement, Lukashenka said that according to the information he had, NATO was planning to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of Poland and Lithuania, which is also an absolute lie. But as a result we were given three countries for the possible thermo-nuclear strike - Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania," Felshtinsky said.

He believes that Putin is considering this option of "limited nuclear war" to put pressure on Europe.

"Probably the scenario that Putin sees is that after this shelling from Belarus towards the direction of Europe - I do not know which direction - the Europeans will get scared and here, of course, they will give everything in the world to Putin. I think this scenario is in his head. I sincerely hope that they will not allow him to realize it", the historian stressed.