Russian
President Vladimir
Putin says his country will now station
tactical nuclear weapons
right on NATO's doorstep.
Today, Putin announced an agreement
with Belarus
and says a special storage facility
for those weapons will be built there
by July.
As you can see, Belarus borders both
naito ally Poland and Ukraine and CNN.
A former CNN Moscow bureau
chief, Jill Dougherty, joins us now.
She's an adjunct professor
at Georgetown University.
Jill, I mean, we've we've heard
Vladimir Putin
try so many times
to be provocative when it comes to,
you know,
injecting the prospect of nuclear weapons
into this war in Ukraine.
Your reaction to this announcement?
Is it just more of that bluster?
Should it be taken more seriously?
I think what he's trying to do,
as usual, is raise the threat level.
And as soon as you use
the word
nuclear, regardless
what kind of nukes he's talking about
is frightening and it gets attention.
And I know saying that
we should diminish it, Jim,
that I think,
you know,
as usual with President
Putin, you have to read the fine print
and put it into context.
So what he's saying is
you said
that we will station these
tactical nuclear weapons,
you know, field weapons in Belarus.
And the question is, you know,
when will this happen? Maybe this summer.
But I think the important thing is he's
not saying
and in fact, he's
saying they will not put them
in the hands of Alexander Lukashenko,
who is the president of Belarus.
And that could be a problem.
He is keeping control,
he says, in the hands of himself,
obviously, and in Russia in general.
So I do think that
in all of these things,
as soon as you kind of begin
upping the ante
when you're talking
about nuclear weapons,
provocative, sometimes dangerous
But I do not think that,
you know, it's
panic time or anything like that.
It's Putin
trying to escalate
because he has problems
right.
I mean, we've seen that time and again
in Ukraine.
And do you think this decision
will force any sort of countermove
by the U.S.
or naito,
or do they just keep an eye on it
and see,
you know,
how much he really does deliver on this?
Well, don't forget that the United States
itself has tactical nuclear weapons
in Europe.
In fact,
Putin mentioned
there are six bases where they are kept
and that actually apparently is correct,
that there are six bases
where the United States
keeps weapons like that.
But they are really under
control of the U.S.
Air Force and they are on bases.
There are not just spread
all over the place.
So is Putin saying
and very much
we've seen this, Jim, in the Ukraine war,
you're doing something It's our turn.
We're going to do it.
But again, it you know,
it does upped the ante.
And if you have
more nuclear weapons there,
and then also I think it raises
a real question,
what why is Lukashenko
even agreeing to this?
You know,
this is something he gave up
nuclear weapons.
Ukraine Belarus,
they all gave him up
back in the early nineties.
Why does he want any type
of nuclear weapon back?
Right.
I mean,
and Joe, I
was just about to ask you that.
I mean, Belarus
has had no nuclear weapons
in its territory since the early 1990s.
That I mean, that of itself does
present an escalation.
I mean,
whether you want to call this a Cold War
between the U.S.
and Russia, I mean it is it's provocative
it's provocative.
And it's also is
I think, a sign of weakness,
you know,
weakness by Putin
because one of the only things
that he can do right
now, let's, let's look at a situation
He did not get a whole lot
out of that meeting
with the Chinese president Xi.
He is now the ICC has issued a warrant
for his arrest as a war criminal.
And then also the fighting in Ukraine
isn't going very well.
So the one thing that Vladimir Putin has
all the time in his pocket
is his nuclear weapons.
So he tends to
resort to bluster about those threats.
And I think that's what we've got here.
But every time you do that,
it does get more dangerous
because there will be apparently new
tactical weapons in Belarus.