Russia and Belarus to sign treaty on security guarantees, Kremlin says

Russia and Belarus will conclude a treaty on mutual security guarantees in the interests of both countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by the state-run RIA news agency as saying on Friday.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was due to host Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Minsk on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics and neighbours.

"This is an absolutely reciprocal initiative," Peskov was cited as saying by RIA, referring to the treaty.

"The very logic of the development of events dictates the need for such a document."

Putin approved changes last month which lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike on Russia and extended Moscow's nuclear umbrella to cover Belarus, a key ally.

Nuclear weapons were withdrawn from Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but Putin announced last year that Russia was placing tactical nuclear missiles there as a deterrent to the West.

Lukashenko, in power in Belarus since 1994, said in October that any use of Russian nuclear weapons now deployed in Belarus would require his personal assent.

Moscow and Minsk regularly conduct joint military drills, and a Russian-led post-Soviet military bloc is set to hold exercises in Belarus next September.