MINSK. May 25 (Interfax) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said he thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for deciding to station Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
"When the conversation touched on nuclear weapons [at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Moscow on Wednesday], which frankly speaking I didn't hear well enough because of the acoustics, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] told me that the decision was made [on stationing] tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. I replied 'thank you'," Lukashenko said in an interview to Russia's VGTRK state TV and radio company, an excerpt of which journalist Pavel Zarubin published on his Telegram channel.
As reported earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin signed documents in Minsk on Thursday regulating the storage of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons at a special storage facility in Belarus.