Russia, Belarus Launch Second Stage of Drills to Train Troops in Tactical Nuclear Weapons 

In this photo taken from video on Monday, June 10, 2024, and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian troops prepare a missile launcher for joint Russian-Belarusian drills intended to train the military to use tactical nuclear weapons. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this photo taken from video on Monday, June 10, 2024, and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian troops prepare a missile launcher for joint Russian-Belarusian drills intended to train the military to use tactical nuclear weapons. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
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Russia, Belarus Launch Second Stage of Drills to Train Troops in Tactical Nuclear Weapons 

In this photo taken from video on Monday, June 10, 2024, and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian troops prepare a missile launcher for joint Russian-Belarusian drills intended to train the military to use tactical nuclear weapons. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this photo taken from video on Monday, June 10, 2024, and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian troops prepare a missile launcher for joint Russian-Belarusian drills intended to train the military to use tactical nuclear weapons. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Russia and its ally Belarus on Tuesday launched a second stage of drills intended to train their troops in tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin's efforts to discourage the West from ramping up support for Ukraine.

In announcing the nuclear maneuvers last month, the Russian Defense Ministry said they were in response to “provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials regarding the Russian Federation.”

The Kremlin has expressed outrage after French President Emmanuel Macron said he doesn't exclude deploying troops to Ukraine, and the US and some other NATO allies allowed Kyiv to use the weapons supplied by them for striking targets on the Russian territory.

During the second stage of the drills that began Tuesday, Russian and Belarusian troops will undergo joint training in non-strategic nuclear weapons used in combat, the Defense Ministry said. It noted that the exercise is aimed at maintaining readiness of personnel and equipment to ensure “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the alliance of Russia and Belarus.

The first stage of the exercise last month envisaged a preparation for nuclear missions and deployment for launches, according to the Defense Ministry. The Russian military had trained separately during the initial stage of the maneuvers before joint drills with Belarusian forces.

Last year, Russia moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons into neighboring Belarus, which also borders Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has relied on close ties with Russia and provided his country as a staging ground for the war in Ukraine.

Tactical nuclear weapons include air bombs, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery munitions and are meant for use on a battlefield. Usually they are less powerful than the strategic weapons — massive warheads that arm intercontinental ballistic missiles and are intended to obliterate entire cities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted, however, that even Russia’s battlefield nuclear weapons are much more powerful than the two atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.

Last week, Putin declared that the West is wrong to proceed from the assumption that Russia will never use its atomic arsenal.

Putin pointed at the country's nuclear doctrine that envisages the use of nuclear weapons in case of a threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, he said he sees no current threat to Russia’s sovereignty that would warrant the use of nuclear weapons and emphasized that Moscow doesn't need them to defeat Ukraine.

The Russian leader has repeatedly reminded the West about the country's nuclear might since he sent troops into Ukraine in 2022.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."