Poland's EU minister: West should stay calm over Russia's plan for nuclear weapons in Belarus

At a press conference on Monday in Poznań, Poland's European Union Affairs Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk said that Russia's plan to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was "an element of escalation". He added that said escalation was only in narrative as Putin had only announced the plan.

"The reaction should be calm but firm. We cannot be intimidated by Russian propagandists and Russia's president employs this propaganda very often, in an attempt to scare the West and trigger a 'chilling effect'" - Szynkowski vel Sęk said. "The West is meant to be scared to help Ukraine, make concessions, and be afraid to impose more far-reaching sanctions."

"We must not get intimidated, we should not approach such declarations with emotions. We should, however, cooly continue our very strong support for Ukraine," the minister stressed.

Szynkowski vel Sęk also added that Russia should continue to be punished if it does not cease to use aggression in its foreign policy.

Poland's EU minister also underscored the West should send a clear message to Russia and the whole world that "aggression, war crimes on civilians, violation of the international law cannot be a form of pursuing foreign policy of a state". "If a state does pursuit them, not only it suffers a defeat, but also a disaster. It gets punished and coming generations must suffer the consequences of such decisions for decades. Such should be our response to Russia," he said.

NATO on Sunday criticised Vladimir Putin for what it called his "dangerous and irresponsible" nuclear rhetoric, a day after the Russian president said he planned to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Putin likened the move on Saturday to the U.S. stationing its weapons in Europe, while insisting that Russia would not violate its nuclear non-proliferation promises.

Although not unexpected, the plan is one of Russia's clearest nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, and Ukraine called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in response.

While Washington, the world's other nuclear superpower, played down concerns about Putin's announcement, NATO said the Russian president's non-proliferation pledge and his description of U.S. weapons deployment overseas were way off the mark.

"Russia's reference to NATO's nuclear sharing is totally misleading. NATO allies act with full respect of their international commitments," NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said in emailed comments to Reuters on Sunday.

"Russia has consistently broken its arms control commitments," Lungescu said.

A top security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Oleksiy Danilov, said Russia's plan would also destabilise Belarus, which he said had been taken "hostage" by Moscow.

Experts said Russia's move was significant since it had until now been proud that unlike the United States, it did not deploy nuclear weapons outside its borders. It may be the first time since the mid-1990s that it has done so.

Mykhailo Podolyak, another senior Zelenskiy adviser, on Sunday scoffed at Putin's plan on Twitter. "He admits that he is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare with tactics," Podolyak wrote.

Washington appeared to see no change in the potential for Moscow to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, and it and NATO said the news would not affect their own nuclear position.

"We have not seen any changes in Russia's nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own," NATO spokesperson Lungescu wrote.

Tactical nuclear weapons refer to those used for specific gains on a battlefield rather than those with the capacity to wipe out cities. It is unclear how many such weapons Russia has, given it is an area still shrouded in Cold War secrecy.

Ukraine's foreign ministry called for an extraordinary meeting of the U.N. Security Council after Putin's announcement, and it asked the international community to "take decisive measures" to prevent Russia's use of nuclear weapons.

"Russia once again confirms its chronic inability to be a responsible steward of nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence and prevention of war, not as a tool of threats and intimidation."

The European Union joined the chorus of condemnation on Sunday, with its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urging Belarus not to host the weapons and threatening further sanctions.

Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the risk of escalation to nuclear war "remains extremely low".

In Washington, Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, said he regarded Russia’s plan as disturbing and designed to intimidate the West.

"I think this is saber-rattling on the part of Putin basically to try to frighten," McCaul told the Fox News Sunday program. "These tactical nukes are disturbing."

Putin said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long requested the deployment. There was no immediate reaction from Lukashenko.

While the Belarusian army has not formally fought in Ukraine, Minsk and Moscow have close military ties. Minsk allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine last year.

Putin on Sunday also denied Moscow was creating a military alliance with Beijing and instead asserted that Western powers are building a new "axis" similar to the partnership between Germany and Japan during World War Two.

He has often portrayed the Ukraine war as Moscow fighting a Ukraine in the grip of supposed Nazis, abetted by Western powers menacing Russia.

Ukraine - which was part of the Soviet Union and itself suffered devastation at the hands of Hitler's forces - rejects those parallels as spurious pretexts for a war of conquest.