Sometime this summer, if President Vladimir Putin can be believed, Russia moved some of its short-range nuclear weapons into Belarus,\u00a0closer to Ukraine\u00a0and onto NATO\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0declared deployment\u00a0of the Russian weapons on the territory of its neighbor and loyal ally marks a new stage in the Kremlin\u2019s nuclear saber-rattling over its invasion of Ukraine and another bid to discourage the West from increasing military support to Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither Putin nor his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, said how many were moved \u2014 only that Soviet-era facilities in the country were readied to accommodate them, and that Belarusian pilots and missile crews were trained to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. and NATO\u00a0haven\u2019t confirmed\u00a0the move. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denounced Moscow\u2019s rhetoric as \u201cdangerous and reckless,\u201d but said earlier this month the alliance hasn\u2019t seen any change in Russia\u2019s nuclear posture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While some experts doubt the claims by Putin and Lukashenko, others note that Western intelligence might be unable to monitor such movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this month, CNN quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying they had no reason to doubt Putin\u2019s claim about the delivery of the first batch of the weapons to Belarus and noted it could be challenging for the U.S. to track them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles that can destroy entire cities,\u00a0tactical nuclear weapons\u00a0for use against troops on the battlefield can have a yield as small as about 1 kiloton. The U.S. bomb in Hiroshima in World War II was 15 kilotons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The devices are compact: Used on bombs, missiles and artillery shells, they could be discreetly carried on a truck or plane. Aliaksandr Alesin, an independent Minsk-based military analyst, said the weapons use containers that emit no radiation and could have been flown into Belarus without Western intelligence seeing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey easily fit in a regular Il-76 transport plane,\u201d Alesin said. \u201cThere are dozens of flights a day, and it\u2019s very difficult to track down that special flight. The Americans could fail to monitor it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Belarus has 25 underground facilities built during the Cold War for nuclear-tipped intermediate-range missiles that can withstand missile attacks, Alesin said. Only five or six such depots could actually store tactical nuclear weapons, he added, but the military operates at all of them to fool Western intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early in the war, Putin\u00a0referenced his nuclear arsenal\u00a0by vowing repeatedly to use \u201call means\u201d necessary to protect Russia. He has toned down his statements recently, but a top lieutenant continues to dangle the prospect with terrifying ease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia\u2019s Security Council who served as a placeholder president in 2008-12 because Putin was term-limited, unleashes near-daily threats that Moscow won\u2019t hesitate to use nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a recent article, Medvedev said \u201cthe apocalypse isn\u2019t just possible but quite likely,\u201d and the only way to avoid it is to bow to Russian demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world faces a confrontation \u201cfar worse than during the Cuban missile crisis because our enemies have decided to really defeat Russia, the largest nuclear power,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Western observers dismiss that as bluster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin seems to have dialed down his nuclear rhetoric after getting signals to do so from China, said Keir Giles, a Russia expert at Chatham House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe evident Chinese displeasure did have an effect and may have been accompanied by private messaging to Russia,\u201d Giles told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moscow\u2019s defense doctrine envisages a nuclear response to an atomic strike or even an attack with conventional weapons that \u201cthreaten the very existence of the Russian state.\u201d That vague wording has led some Russian experts to urge the Kremlin to spell out those conditions in more detail and force the West to take the warnings more seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe possibility of using nuclear weapons in the current conflict mustn\u2019t be concealed,\u201d said Dmitry Trenin, who headed the Moscow Carnegie Center for 14 years before joining Moscow\u2019s state-funded Institute for World Economy and International Relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe real, not theoretical, perspective of it should create stimuli for stopping the escalation of the war and eventually set the stage for a strategic balance in Europe that would be acceptable to us,\u201d he wrote recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Western beliefs that Putin is bluffing about using nuclear weapons \u201cis an extremely dangerous delusion,\u201d Trenin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sergei Karaganov, a top Russian foreign affairs expert who advises Putin\u2019s Security Council, said Moscow should make its nuclear threats more specific in order to \u201cbreak the will of the West\u201d and force it to stop supporting Ukraine as it seeks to reclaim Russian-held areas in a\u00a0grinding counteroffensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s necessary to restore the fear of nuclear escalation; otherwise mankind is doomed,\u201d he said, suggesting Russia establish a \u201cladder\u201d of accelerating actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deploying nuclear weapons in Belarus was the first step, Karaganov said, with perhaps a follow-up of warning ethnic Russians in countries supporting Ukraine to evacuate areas near facilities that could be nuclear targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If that doesn\u2019t work, Karaganov suggested a Russian nuclear strike on Poland, alleging Washington wouldn\u2019t dare respond in kind to protect a NATO ally, for fear of igniting a global war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we build the right strategy of intimidation and even the use of it, the risk of a retaliatory nuclear or any other strike on our territory could be reduced to a minimum,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly if a madman who hates his own country sits in the White House would America risk to launch a strike \u2018in the defense\u2019 of the Europeans and draw a response, sacrificing Boston for Poznan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Moscow-based Council of Foreign and Defense Policies, a panel of leading military and foreign policy experts that includes Karaganov, denounced his comments as \u201ca direct threat to all of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While pro-Kremlin analysts floated such scenarios, Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader, says hosting Russian nuclear weapons in his country is meant to deter aggression by Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u00a0claimed\u00a0a number of nuclear weapons were flown to Belarus without Western intelligence noticing, with the rest coming later this year. Officials in Moscow and Minsk said the warheads could be carried by Belarusian Su-25 ground attack jets or fitted to short-range Iskander missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giles, of Chatham House, said the deployment was about \u201ccementing Putin\u2019s control over Belarus\u201d and did not offer Moscow any military advantage over placing them in Russia\u2019s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad that borders Poland and Lithuania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The West should recognize this as a ploy \u201cthat has far more to do with Russia\u2019s ambitions for Belarus than any genuine impact on European security beyond that,\u201d Giles said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some observers question whether the deployment to Belarus has even happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miles Pomper, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute, challenged Lukashenko\u2019s claim that nuclear weapons were covertly flown to Belarus. They are normally moved by rail, he said, and there are no signs of \u201cthe support elements that you would see that would go with shipments of weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others note Russia could have deployed the weapons without adhering to protocols used in the 1990s, when Moscow wanted to show the West its nuclear arsenal was secure amid economic and political turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Belarusian military analyst Valery Karbalevich said keeping such details secret could be a Kremlin strategy of \u201capplying permanent pressure and blackmailing Ukraine and the West. The unknown scares more than certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alesin, the Minsk-based analyst, argued that U.S. and NATO may play down the deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus because they pose a threat the West finds difficult to counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Belarusian nuclear balcony will hang over a large part of Europe. But they prefer to pretend that there is no threat, and the Kremlin is just trying to scare the West,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Putin decides to use nuclear weapons, he may do it from Belarus in hopes that a Western response would target that country instead of Russia, Alesin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The political opposition to Lukashenko warns that such a deployment turns Belarus into a hostage of the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Lukashenko sees such weapons as a \u201cnuclear umbrella\u201d protecting the country, \u201cthey turn Belarus into a target,\u201d said exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who tried to unseat the authoritarian leader in a 2020 election widely viewed as fraudulent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are telling the world that preventative measures, political pressure and sanctions are needed to resist the deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus,\u201d she said. \u201cRegrettably, we haven\u2019t seen a strong Western reaction yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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