Pollster says 74 percent of respondents against Russian nukes in Belarus

April 12, BPN. Seventy-four percent of respondents in Belarusian cities are against the upcoming deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in their country, an online poll by Chatham House’s Belarus Initiative has revealed.

Forty-four percent of those polled in March were strongly opposed to the deployment, while 30 percent were somewhat opposed. 10 percent were in favor of the plan, and 15 percent tended to support it.

The previous poll, conducted in August 2022, put the share of opponents of Russian nuclear weapons at 82 percent. But this does not mean that there is a trend towards a more loyal attitude to this type of weapon, Belarus Initiative said.

In an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel on March 25, Vladimir Putin said that a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus would be completed by July 1. “We don’t pass [nuclear weapons to Belarus]. And the USA does not pass them to its allies. Basically, we do everything that it has been doing for decades. It has them in certain allied countries, preparing their carriers and their crews,” he said.