Those sanctions have crippled the Belarus economy, which shrank by a record 4.7% last year. “The two dictators have gone too far in their war games, and it will only lead to the toughening of Western sanctions.” “The deployment of Russian nuclear weapons will make Belarus a target in case of an escalation and seriously jeopardize Belarusians’ lives,” said Tsikhanouskaya, who fled the country after the election and has become a fierce critic-in-exile of Lukashenko. Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in the 2020 election after her activist husband was jailed, told AP that hosting Russian nuclear weapons would turn the Belarusian people into hostages. “From Belarus, Russian nuclear-tipped missiles could reach Ukraine, the entire territory of Poland, the Baltics and part of Germany, and this ‘Belarusian nuclear balcony’ will rattle Western politicians’ nerves for a long time to come.” “Belarus was a Soviet nuclear fortress, and now Putin and Lukashenko have decided to not only restore but to strengthen it,” Alesin told AP.
Soviet nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were moved to Russia under a U.S.-brokered deal after the USSR's collapse in 1991. It also has trained Belarusian crews to operate the planes and missiles armed with nuclear weapons.ĭuring the Cold War, Belarus hosted about two-thirds of Moscow's arsenal of nuclear-tipped intermediate range missiles, Alesin said, adding that dozens of Soviet-era storage sites can still be used for such weapons. Russia already has modified Belarusian warplanes to carry nuclear weapons and given its ally Iskander short-range missiles that can be fitted with a nuclear warhead. The construction of storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be finished by July 1, Putin said. “They don’t bomb countries with nuclear weapons,” Lukashenko said recently. While agreeing to station some of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons in his country, Lukashenko cast the move as protection against what he described as NATO's aggressive plans and Western plots against his government. He said Lukashenko won't do it “because he fears to stir up discontent among the military, who could turn their weapons in a different direction.”
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She asked not to be identified by her full name for her own security.Ī new Belarusian air defense unit was formed recently in the city, she said, and “war fears have increased” as troop numbers have grown.īelarusian military analyst Aliaksandr Alesin said that if the country's 45,000-member army is sent into Ukraine, there might be "mass refusals to follow orders.” “The Belarusians don’t see any sense in this war,” said Svyatlana, a 54-year-old manager in Luninets, near the border. Russia's invasion is deeply unpopular in Belarus, which shares a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) border with Ukraine and has many citizens with family or personal ties there. Lukashenko, who meets regularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has relied on the Kremlin's political and economic support to survive months of protests, mass arrests and Western sanctions following an election in 2020 that kept him in power and was widely seen at home and abroad as rigged. But he has avoided having Belarus take part directly in the fighting - for now.Īnalysts and political opponents say that further involvement over Ukraine could rekindle public anger against him and erode his iron-fisted grip on power that has lasted for nearly 29 years.
24, 2022, and offered to station some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons there. "Everybody fears that they won't allow Belarusians to keep watching the war from a distance for too long.”īelarus President Alexander Lukashenko has welcomed thousands of Russian troops to his country, allowed the Kremlin to use it to launch the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. “Russian troops are already in Belarus, and I see the country gradually being turned into a military barracks," he said. He asked not to be fully identified out of concern for his personal safety. “They are telling us that Belarus won’t enter the war against Ukraine, but I hear Russian warplanes roar over my house heading to the Machulishchi air base outside Minsk,” the 27-year-old told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. It's part of an effort that will see thousands of men in Belarus attend drills amid fears that the staunch Moscow ally could be drawn into the fighting. TALLINN – For Ruslan, an engineer in the Belarus capital of Minsk, Russia's war in neighboring Ukraine suddenly seemed closer than ever when a conscription office recently sent him a summons for military training.
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