Russia and Belarus launched joint military exercises on Monday to practice the combat deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, marking the first such drills since Moscow deployed its Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system to Belarusian territory.

Belarus has launched exercises on the combat deployment of nuclear weapons in cooperation with Russia.

According to the statement, a key feature of the exercise is to check the preparedness of troops for accomplishing the tasks of combat use from unprepared areas across the entire…