By Brian Whitmore
Suddenly, the prospect of Russian nuclear weapons being stationed on Belarusian soil no longer seems all that far-fetched.
When Alyaksandr Lukashenka first raised the prospect back in November 2021, it was tempting to dismiss the remarks as just another outlandish comment from the mercurial Belarusian autocrat. But Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei has now raised the issue once again in an interview with RT Arabic on December 18.
And this week, as if on cue, two senior Russian officials endorsed the idea. Speaking to reporters on December 20, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the potential deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus was very much on the table.
The next day, on December 21, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko confirmed that “all options”, including basing nuclear weapons in Belarus, would be considered if Ukraine were granted NATO membership or if the alliance deployed additional forces or weapons to the Baltic states.
As all this loose nuke talk was taking place, Russia sent two nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, escorted by Su-30SM fighter jets, to patrol Belarus’s western border with the EU. Adding to the increasingly bellicose atmosphere, General Uladzimir Archakov, the Deputy Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, dismissed the Baltic states as “nothing in military terms” and declared that they would be destroyed in the event of a conflict.
As 2021 draws to a close, the Kremlin is rapidly solidifying its ongoing militarization of Belarus. Whether or not the recent talk of deploying nuclear weapons comes to anything, the steady expansion of Moscow’s military footprint in its far smaller but strategically important neighbor is dramatically altering the security equation on NATO’s eastern flank. Nukes or no nukes, Putin has turned Belarus into a military platform and a force multiplier.