Russia's announcement that it will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus shows that a Russia-China joint statement days earlier amounted to "empty promises", NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement came just days after Russia and China jointly declared countries should not deploy nuclear weapons outside their borders, Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
He said this showed such statements are "empty promises and what we need to watch closely is what Russia is doing."
Stoltenberg said NATO had not seen any signs so far that Russia was following through on Putin's announcement.
In a media briefing after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Stoltenberg also said Ukraine's future is in the Euro-Atlantic family and that NATO will continue to support Georgia, Moldova and Bosnia.