Lukashenko: Nuclear weapons for any country that wants to join the union with Russia

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that if any other country wanted to join the Russia-Belarus union, "there would be nuclear weapons for everyone."

Russia went ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the first time the Kremlin has deployed the warheads beyond Russia's borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, raising concerns in the West.

In an interview broadcast on Russian state television late on Sunday, Lukashenko, President Vladimir Putin's strongest ally among Russia's neighbours, said it must be "strategically understood that Minsk and Moscow have a unique opportunity to unite."

Lukashenko added: "There is no one who opposes Kazakhstan and other countries that have close relations like us with the Russian Federation, if anyone is worried... It's very simple: let him join the state of the union between Belarus and Russia. That's it, and there will be nuclear weapons for everyone."

He added that this was his point of view, not Moscow's.

Together, Russia and Belarus formally form the Union State, an alliance between the two former republics of the Soviet Union.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Kazakhstan, a country of 20 million people with close historical ties to Moscow but refusing to recognise Russia's annexation of parts of Ukraine, rejected Lukashenko's invitation to join the bloc.

"I appreciate his joke," Tokayev's office quoted him as saying via Telegram, adding that Kazakhstan is already a member of a broader Russian-led trade bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union, so there is no need for further integration.

In a statement that could be interpreted as criticism of Moscow and Minsk, he added: "As for nuclear weapons, we do not need them because we have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty."

"We remain committed to our commitments under those international documents."