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Belarus starts taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons

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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Reuters reported.

The deployment is Moscow's first move of such warheads - shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield - outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

"We have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia," Lukashenko said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 Russian state TV channel which was posted on the Belarusian Belta state news agency's Telegram channel.

"The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he said, speaking on a road in a forest clearing with military vehicles parked nearby and some kind of military storage facility visible in the background.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia, which will retain control of the tactical nuclear weapons, would start deploying them in Belarus after special storage facilities to house them were made ready, read the report.

The Russian leader announced in March he had agreed to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, pointing to the U.S deployment of such weapons in a host of European countries over many decades.

The United States has criticised Putin's decision but has said it has no intention of altering its own stance on strategic nuclear weapons and has not seen any signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.

The Russian step is nonetheless being watched closely by the United States and its allies as well as by China, which has repeatedly cautioned against the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, told Russian state TV in the interview, which was released late on Tuesday, that his country had numerous nuclear storage facilities left over from the Soviet-era and had restored five or six of them, Reuters reported.

He played down the idea that Russian control of the weapons was an impediment to using them quickly if he felt such a move was necessary, saying he and Putin could pick up the phone to each other "at any moment".

Earlier on Tuesday, he had said separately that the Russian tactical nuclear weapons would be physically deployed on the territory of Belarus "in several days" and that he had the facilities to host longer-range missiles too if ever needed.

Lukashenko, who has allowed his country to be used by Russian forces attacking Ukraine as part of what Moscow calls its "special military operation", says the nuclear deployment will act as a deterrent against potential aggressors.

Belarus borders three NATO member countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, red the report.

The 68-year-old former Soviet collective farm boss, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, making him Europe's longest-serving leader, said he didn't simply ask Putin for the weapons, but "demanded" them.

"We have always been a target," Lukashenko said. "They (the West) have wanted to tear us to pieces since 2020. No one has so far fought against a nuclear country, a country that has nuclear weapons."

Lukashenko has repeatedly accused the West of trying to topple him after mass protests against his rule erupted in 2020 in the wake of a presidential election the opposition said he had fraudulently won. Lukashenko said he had won fairly, while conducting a sweeping crackdown on his opponents.

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North Korea’s Kim accuses US of stoking tension, warns of nuclear war

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of ramping up tension and provocations, saying the Korean peninsula has never faced a greater risk of nuclear war, state media KCNA said on Friday.

The comments came amid international criticism over increasingly close military co-operation between Pyongyang and Moscow, and assertions that North Korea sent more than 10,000 troops to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Previous negotiations with Washington have only highlighted its "aggressive and hostile" policy toward North Korea, Kim said in a speech at a military exhibition in Pyongyang, the capital, the KCNA news agency said.

"Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war," he said on Thursday.

"We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States," he said, adding that the talks had only shown its aggressive and hostile policy toward North Korea could never change.

North Korean state media have not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Donald Trump, who held three unprecedented meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore, Hanoi, and at the Korean border, in 2018 and 2019.

But their diplomacy yielded no concrete outcome due to the gap between U.S. calls for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and Kim's demands for sanctions relief.

Trump has long touted his ties with Kim, saying last month the two countries would have had "a nuclear war with millions of people killed", but he had stopped it, thanks to his ties with the North's leader.

Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said Kim could be trying to underscore the North's nuclear capabilities ahead of Trump's second term, while leaving the door open for diplomacy.

"He might be suggesting Trump should show his 'willingness to co-exist' before re-opening any talks and calling for a change in the U.S. hostile attitude," Hong said.

MILITARY EXHIBITION

Kim also called for developing and upgrading "ultra-modern" versions of weaponry, and vowed to keep advancing defence capabilities to bolster the North's strategic position, KCNA said.

Strategic and tactical weapons were on display at the event, called the Defence Development Exhibition.

KCNA pictures showed the Hwasong-19 and 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Chollima-1 rocket used in a successful satellite launch in November 2023, and the Saetbyol-9 multi-purpose attack drone, which resembles the U.S. Reaper.

Hong said the pictures also included several weapons needed by or presumed to already have been supplied to Russia for its war in Ukraine, such as 240mm multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, anti-tank systems and drones.

North Korea has shipped additional arms to Russia, the South's lawmakers said on Thursday, after being briefed by the national intelligence agency.

Last year, when he was defence minister, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu accompanied Kim to a defence fair that showcased missiles and weapons.

Last week, Kim urged the North's military to improve its war-fighting capabilities, blaming the United States and its allies for stoking tension to "the worst phase in history" and calling the Korean peninsula "the world's biggest hotspot".

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ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel’s Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader

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Judges at the International Criminal Court have issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, Reuters reported on Thursday afternoon.

The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20, that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct.7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.

The ICC said Israel's acceptance of the court's jurisdiction was not required.

Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has said it killed Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike but Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied this.

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US vetoes UN Security Council resolution on Gaza ceasefire

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The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, drawing criticism of the Biden administration for once again blocking international action aimed at halting Israel's war with Hamas.

The 15-member council voted on a resolution put forward by 10 non-permanent members that called for an "immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in the 13-month conflict and separately demanded the release of hostages, Reuters reported.

Only the U.S. voted against, using its veto as a permanent council member to block the resolution.

Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Washington had made clear it would only support a resolution that explicitly calls for the immediate release of hostages as part of a ceasefire.

"A durable end to the war must come with the release of the hostages. These two urgent goals are inextricably linked. This resolution abandoned that necessity, and for that reason, the United States could not support it," he said.

Wood said the U.S. had sought compromise, but the text of the proposed resolution would have sent a "dangerous message" to Hamas that "there's no need to come back to the negotiating table."

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once. It was launched in response to an attack by Hamas-led fighters who killed 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Members roundly criticized the U.S. for blocking the resolution put forward by the council's 10 elected members: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland.

"It is deeply regretted that due to the use of the veto this council has once again failed to uphold its responsibility to maintain international peace and security," Malta's U.N. Ambassador Vanessa Frazier said after the vote failed, adding that the text of the resolution "was by no means a maximalist one."

"It represented the bare minimum of what is needed to begin to address the desperate situation on the ground," she said.

Food security experts have warned that famine is imminent among Gaza's 2.3 million people.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who leaves office on Jan. 20, has offered Israel strong diplomatic backing and continued to provide arms for the war, while trying unsuccessfully to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that would see hostages released in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel.

After blocking earlier resolutions on Gaza, Washington in March abstained from a vote that allowed a resolution to pass demanding an immediate ceasefire.

A senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of Wednesday's vote, said Britain had put forward new language that the U.S. would have supported as a compromise, but that was rejected by the elected members.

Some members were more interested in bringing about a U.S. veto than compromising on the resolution, the official said, accusing U.S. adversaries Russia and China of encouraging those members.

'GREEN LIGHT'

France's ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said the resolution rejected by the U.S. "very firmly" required the release of hostages.

"France still has two hostages in Gaza, and we deeply regret that the Security Council was not able to formulate this demand," he said.

China's U.N. ambassador, Fu Cong, said each time the United States had exercised its veto to protect Israel, the number of people killed in Gaza had steadily risen.

"How many more people have to die before they wake up from their pretend slumber?" he asked.

"Insistence on setting a precondition for ceasefire is tantamount to giving the green light to continue the war and condoning the continued killing."

Israel's U.N. ambassador Danny Danon said ahead of the vote the text was not a resolution for peace but was "a resolution for appeasement" of Hamas.

"History will remember who stood with the hostages and who abandoned them," Danon said.

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