Russia has deployed the first batch of missiles and hardware in Belarus as part of its plan to transfer some of its tactical nuclear weapons to the country, according to the statement by Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenka, which he made in a staged discussion with a Russian TV presenter. Moscow first announced the transfer in March this year, pointing out that it would retain control of the weapons. This is the first deployment of tactical nuclear weapons outside of Russia since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Elsewhere, on 13 June, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that IAEA experts required access to a location near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to clarify the discrepancies between different measurements of the height of the Kakhovka reservoir which is supplying water to cool ZNPP’s reactors and spent fuel storage. (The level of the Kakhovka reservoir has been dropping rapidly since the dam was severely damaged a few days ago.)

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