Ukraine has described Belarus as Moscow’s “nuclear hostage” after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in the neighboring country. “The Kremlin has taken Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” Secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov tweeted on Sunday. This decision is a “step towards the internal destabilization of the country”.
According to Danilov, the announcement “increased the level of negative perception and public rejection of Russia and Putin in Belarusian society.” Putin said on Saturday that he had agreed to the stationing of nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory with Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus, which has been ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, not only borders Ukraine, but also EU member states Poland and Lithuania.
Putin justified his decision with the intention, announced Monday by British Deputy Defense Secretary Annabel Goldie, to supply Ukraine with armor-piercing ammunition containing enriched uranium.
Lukashenko is a staunch ally of Russian President Putin. At the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the country, which is financially and politically dependent on Moscow, also served as a starting point for the Russian military offensive, but Belarusian armed forces have not yet intervened in the fighting.
Despite Putin’s announcement that nuclear weapons will be stationed in Belarus, US experts see no growing danger of a nuclear war. Saturday night’s announcement was irrelevant to the “risk of escalation to nuclear war, which remains extremely low,” according to an analysis by the US Institute for War Studies (ISW). Russia has already been able to reach any point on earth with its nuclear weapons. But Putin is a “risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without intending to do so.”
Putin wants to stir up fears of a nuclear escalation in the West in order to break support for Ukraine, for example in the delivery of heavy weapons. According to the ISW, it is “very unlikely that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or anywhere else.” According to the ISW, Putin’s step was already announced before the war in Ukraine. By stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia is above all cementing its influence in the ex-Soviet republic.
In the new ISW analysis, the experts also doubt Putin’s announcement that he would build or modernize 1,600 tanks this year. According to this, Russia’s only tank factory Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) can only produce 20 tanks a month, but is losing many times that number every day in the war in Ukraine.
According to the ISW authors, Putin is primarily trying to create an “aura of the Soviet era” with its strong military industry at the time. However, his statements have nothing to do with the reality that the economic power and military capacities of the USA and Europe are superior to those of Russia.