Russia has reportedly removed its nuclear munitions from a storage facility in Belgorod following the seizures of settlements by Russian defectors fighting alongside the Ukrainian army.
Members of the Freedom of Russia Legion, formed mere weeks into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” he launched on Ukraine last February, is made up of former Russian army members in addition to other Russian and Belarusian volunteers not previously part of military factions.
The Russian city of Kozinka was seized in the region—taken by members of the legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK). Ilya Ponomarev, an exiled Russian politician and political representative for the group, told Newsweek on Monday that its goal is “to liberate Russia from Putinism.”
Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, said during a telethon on Monday that the Russian facility is known as military unit No. 25624 and located in Grayvoron, a town and administrative center of the Belgorod oblast situated in western Russia near the Ukrainian border, according to Ukrainian news agency Ukrainska Pravda.
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It was labeled as “object C” in reference to Russian Strategic Missile Forces’ conventional name for its central nuclear storage facility, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Nikolai Sokov, senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, told Newsweek via email on Monday that he is more than “99 percent certain” that if the report is true, the withdrawal was conducted for the safety of the weapons—adding that Russian use of them “is practically zero.”
“If nuclear weapons are used, this will follow an escalation with NATO and they will be used against NATO (most likely Poland),” Sokov said. “So far, however, Moscow has displayed relative caution: In spite of various vague threats, they have not taken steps at escalation—which could result in nuclear use.”
Grayvoron was entered by legion members, according to Ukrainska Pravda, where they called on residents to stay home and “not to resist.” The Russian village Gora-Podol was also reportedly in the midst of being taken over.
Russia announces that it has evacuated its tactical nuclear weapons from the Belgorod-22 facility near Grayvoron.
They were stored only a few km from where the fighting is taking place right now pic.twitter.com/MrgqWDGRAr
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 22, 2023
Yusov said Monday’s events had nothing to do with Ukraine and its military.
“The security and defense forces of Ukraine are liberating Ukrainian territory and de-occupying our lands in order to reach the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine of 1991,” Yusov said, according to Ukrinform. “Everything that is happening on the territory of the Russian Federation is an internal Russian conflict.”
Meanwhile, Yusov’s claim is taken by Sokov with a large grain of salt.
Sokov believes the incursion may ultimately have deadly consequences, citing a previous report by The Washington Post affiliated with leaked documents that purportedly showed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top military brass pondering “conducting strikes in Russia” to occupy border cities in order “to give Kyiv leverage in talks with Moscow”.
“As a result, and since Moscow sees this war as a proxy war with NATO, the risk of escalation increases,” he said. “Where this ‘Legion’ advances further and shoots at the nuclear storage, even if it is empty by that moment, the risk of escalation will increase further. It has been my expectation that summer and early fall may see dangerous developments. Unfortunately, things do seem to go that way.”
Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries via email for comment.