President Vladimir Putin admits to deploying nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, on the doorstep of the European Union, if he believes Russia’s security is at risk due to NATO action in Ukraine.
The nuclear card was drawn in play combined with the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukachenko and has been part of the pressure game since the Russian leader issued an ultimatum to the United States and its European allies to try to resolve the crisis with Kiev.
On Monday (20), the Belarusian chancellor, Vladimir Makei, had said that his country was ready to receive Russian nuclear weapons if there was a threat from NATO. His boss, Lukachenko, specified that a case for this would be the deployment of missiles with atomic warheads in neighboring Poland.
Asked about the hypotheses, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said: “It is no secret that the deployment of various types of weapons near our borders, which may present a danger to us, clearly requires adequate steps to balance the situation. . Several options are available”.
This is all a rhetorical game, but it’s not every day that nuclear weapons holders make such less-than-subtle threats. First, there is no indication that NATO is planning to deploy intermediate-range missiles with nuclear capability anywhere in Europe, despite the fact that the United States in 2019 dropped the treaty that explicitly prohibited this.
Second, the statements form part of a narrative construction by the Kremlin about the current crisis, which began when Putin deployed somewhere between 100,000 and 110,000 troops to areas relatively close to the Ukrainian borders. When it did something similar in April, it aimed to curb Kiev’s perceived move to try to retake areas under the control of pro-Russian separatists, immersed in a civil war that has been frozen since 2014, when they sought independence after Putin annexed Crimea.
But the takeover of the peninsula, in the wake of the overthrow of the pro-Kremlin government in Ukraine, was intended to keep Kiev under pressure and unable to officially join NATO and the European Union, and to protect Russia’s vital Black Sea Fleet—based by leasing in the main Crimean city, Sevastopol.
Now, however, Putin indicates that he wants a solution to the issue, which in the canon of Russian leadership over the centuries does not include allowing the taking of buffer areas by adversaries.
By placing the military charter explicitly, making the US and Europe denounce the imminent risk of an invasion that it denies wanting, the Russian gained strength in the bargain.
For now, the West maintains the rhetorical hard line, but always in economic terms. No one spoke, for example, of militarizing Ukraine — even though $80 million worth of US equipment has been provided this year, in addition to Turkish attack drones, which angered Putin. By bringing the possibility of retorting with the forbidden words, nuclear weapons, the Russians raise the tone in an already very delicate game.
Just last Tuesday (14), for example, half the fleet of the most sophisticated American intelligence-gathering plane, the RC-135V/W River Joint, nibbled areas around Russia in the Black and Baltic Seas.
A possible collision in an intercept can lead to an unwanted escalation, although, of course, no one is talking about the use of nuclear weapons. The ultimatum given by Russia is unenforceable. In short, he asks NATO to withdraw forces from countries it absorbed after 1997, that is, countries from the ex-Communist and ex-Soviet blocs like Poland, Romania, Lithuania and others.
Furthermore, it demands that the Western military alliance no longer admit any former states associated with the Soviet Union, namely Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. This makes clear its strategic intention to have neutral or allied areas separating Russians from Westerners.
In Belarus, this happens through the final kidnapping of the dictatorship, which has always been a difficult ally to control. But massive protests against Lukachenko’s rigged election in 2020, followed by a violent crackdown reported abroad, have weakened the Belarusian leader.
Russia intensified its military presence in the country, which became an extension of its forces. Since the crisis between Minsk and Warsaw over the forced influx of migrants, Moscow has patrolled the Belarusian skies with strategic bombers. Now Lukachenko returns the favor with the nuclear proposal.
Finally, the Russian ultimatum calls for a mutual commitment not to install those missiles banned by the 1987 agreement that were thrown away by Donald Trump. Only the last item can generate any kind of negotiation, and yet NATO leaders are reluctant to admit that.
The missile issue unnerves Moscow because the eventual deployment of such weapons in Eastern Europe would put the capital perhaps four minutes away from a nuclear detonation. Intercontinental weapons take half an hour to land in Russia, with time for retaliation and intercept attempts.
On the other hand, the Russians themselves have their missiles of the type installed in Crimea and Kaliningrad, which leaves all capitals as far as Berlin in their sights. For the others and for the US, they have longer-range missiles.
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