Lukashenko's Nuclear Weapons Offer Rejected by Russia's Neighbor

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has rejected his Belarusian counterpart's proposal to join the Russia-Belarus "Union State," calling the offer a "joke."

The developments come after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview released on Sunday that if other countries wanted to join the pact between Russia and Belarus, there could be "nuclear weapons for everyone." Russia recently opted to move ahead with plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Reuters.

Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. While Belarus hasn't directly joined the Ukraine conflict, Russian troops have been allowed to perform exercises on Belarusian territory since before the beginning of the war. The country was used by Russia to launch its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The Belarusian government website states that the Union State pact between Belarus and Russia, signed in 1999, defines a series of major goals: "to ensure peaceful and democratic development, to establish a single economic and customs area and proper legal framework, to ensure sustainable economic development, to pursue the agreed foreign, defense and social policies, to ensure security and fight against crime."

Lukashenko in his interview claimed that any nations who joined the "Union State" pact could be provided with nuclear weapons, calling the prospect a "unique chance to unite."

"If someone is worried... I don't think [President of Kazakhstan] Kassym Tokayev is worried about this, but if something suddenly happens, then no one minds Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations as we have with the Russian Federation," Lukashenko told Russian propagandist Pavel Zarubin. "It's very simple. [Countries] should join the union of Belarus with Russia, and that's it: there will be nuclear weapons for everyone."

Tokayev responded to the proposal at a meeting with agricultural producers while visiting the North Kazakhstan region on Monday, saying that his nation was already a member of a broader Russian-led trade bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union.

"One of these days, the President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko offered Kazakhstan to join the Union State," the Kazakh president said.

"I appreciated his joke. I think that there is no need for this since there are other integration associations, first of all, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)."

He continued: "As for nuclear weapons, we don't need them, since we have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the [Comprehensive] Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."

Kazakhstan remains "committed to our obligations under those international documents," Tokayev said.

"I think that cooperation in this vast Eurasian region, or, as they say now, Greater Eurasia, should develop in the economic direction in which we are all interested. We need to create a real common market."

Multiple nuclear threats have been made by Russian officials against Ukraine throughout Moscow's full-scale invasion. Putin said in a televised address to the nation in September 2022 that he'd be prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory.

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