Days after Russia confirmed positioning tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, US President Joe Biden said Vladimir Putin's threat of using nukes is “real”. Biden had earlier said he does not think the Russian president would resort to using nuclear weapons in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine which approaches its 500th day.
"When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy," Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday."They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It's real," Biden said.
Speaking at Russia's flagship economic forum in St Petersburg on Saturday, Putin said that transferring the tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus, Russia's key ally in the invasion against Ukraine, would be completed by the end of the summer. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said earlier this week that Russian tactical nuclear weapons included some three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan in 1945. This is Russia's first deployment of such warheads outside its borders since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Russian deployment is 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. Analysts look at Putin's move as a warning for the West—to force NATO allies to reduce supplies of weapons to Ukraine.
Overnight drone attacks
Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding regions, officials revealed on Tuesday, as Ukraine claimed it has retaken eight villages in the counter-offensive. Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar Russia had concentrated its units in the east, including air assault troops, but that Ukrainian forces were preventing their advance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the efforts of the troops and said he would continue talks with Western allies to get ammunition supplies to them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Russia claimed it has repelled numerous assaults and it released a video showing a French-made tank reportedly seized in the eastern Donetsk region. Putin said last week that Western-supplied hardware such as German-made Leopard tanks were regularly destroyed and if Kyiv got US-made F-16 fighter jets from its allies, they would go up in flames too.
UK military sources have said that both Russia and Ukraine are suffering heavy casualties as Kyiv puts up a tough fight to dislodge Kremlin's forces from occupied areas.
