US envoy to OSCE: Belarus “flagrantly” enabling war in Ukraine

March 30, BPN. Belarus is “flagrantly enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine and its destabilizing behavior in the OSCE region,” said Michael Carpenter, US envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He said Belarus was repeating “the same spurious claims about ‘defensive’ exercises carried out this year that it made about so-called ‘exercises’ conducted before Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.”

“This past weekend, Putin took the extremely escalatory and irresponsible decision to station nuclear weapons in Belarus,” Carpenter told the Forum for Security Cooperation on March 29.

He said the OSCE didn’t compromise its foundational principles and continued to blame Russia for the war of aggression against Ukraine and “to hold Belarus to account for its complicity in this war.”

Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel on March 25 that a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus would be completed by July 1.

Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine from Belarusian territory, where it has an increased military presence. It used Belarus as a launchpad for its February 2022 offensive on Kyiv. At the same time, Belarus says its troops are not directly involved in hostilities in Ukraine.