When Putin invaded Ukraine, he also decided to cut Russia off from most of the world. Big. Mistake.
17 months into the war that was supposed to end in a few days, Russia is now the most sanctioned
country on the planet. The sanctions on it exceed even those placed on Iran and North Korea,
and many of Russia’s supposed besties aren’t too keen on coming to its defense. Even China.
One of Russia’s few allies is Belarus. But what if this relationship is not as close as
Putin imagines? Could Belarus even decide to use nuclear weapons as a means of leverage against its
larger neighbor? Let’s take a look at the tangled relationship between Russia and Belarus, starting
with Belarus' involvement in the Wagner rebellion. When Belarus intervened in the Wagner rebellion in
Russia at the end of June, its authoritarian ruler, President Alexander Lukashenko,
defused the situation when he offered to host Wagner’s mutinous leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin,
at his capital in Minsk. Prigozhin accepted and began a very short-lived exile there, ending the
rebellion. Prigozhin has supposedly left Belarus as of July 10th, but Lukashenko’s intervention
in the Wagner rebellion shows the extent to which Russian and Belarussian politics are intertwined.
Belarus was also in the news at the beginning of the war when Russian troops used its territory as
a staging point for their failed attack on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Belarus was also one of
only a handful of countries to vote against a United Nations resolution which condemned the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, something that even China did not do (it rather abstained
from voting either way). Instead, Belarus voted against the condemnation and blamed NATO for the
war. The moves earned Belarus new sanctions and further distrust by the international community.
This distrust built on very recent history. Belarus’ presidential election of 2020 was
widely regarded by international observers as being corrupt, rather than free and fair. The
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union all refused to recognize Alexander
Lukashenko as the winner of the election and therefore the legitimate President of
Belarus. For Lukashenko, though, the election was standard operating procedure. He even once
referred to himself as the last dictator in Europe in a 2012 interview with Reuters,
though he tried to distance himself from the negative implications of that word, saying
he is a “not a bad person at all.” International observers have regarded all of Belarus’ elections
since 1994 as being neither free nor fair. Lukashenko’s relationship with Vladimir Putin
has always been politically and personally close. Lukashenko depends on Putin’s support to remain
in power and Belarus is essentially a client state for the Russian Federation. The protests
in 2020 which followed the controversial election only strengthened Putin’s hold on Lukashenko.
For Russia, the existence of Belarus has served a useful geopolitical purpose. It
has acted as a friendly buffer state between it and NATO, Poland in particular. Belarus as an
independent state within Russia’s orbit allows Moscow to shore up its western frontier without
directly paying the costs for its defense. However, as NATO has expanded to encompass the
Baltic countries and, in 2023, Finland, Russia’s calculations toward the usefulness of Belarus’
independence may be starting to change. In 2023, reports began to circulate that the Kremlin
might be eyeing a full annexation of Belarus by 2030. But why would it desire to do this and put
itself even more on NATO’s collective border? The war in Ukraine may have been a reason for
the Kremlin to shift some of its longstanding policy toward Belarus. While Belarus hosted
Russian troops that took part in the Battle of Kyiv, it did not commit its own forces to that
campaign. Lukashenko may be a close ally of Putin, but he was not eager to join his war
directly. Belarus has stated it would only become an active combatant in Ukraine if it is attacked.
As time has gone on and the war continues with no end in sight,
Lukashenko must be convinced that he made the right decision. Belarus may be an economically
and politically isolated country, but it is not nearly as isolated as its main benefactor.
The lack of a complete unity of interest between Belarus and Russia poses problems for the latter.
With Belarus as an independent country, Russia lacks a way to put pressure on Ukraine’s capital
at a moment’s notice. It also lacks the easiest way to deploy troops on the borders of Poland,
Lithuania, and Latvia outside of the confined and surrounded enclave of Kaliningrad. If Belarus were
annexed to Russia, it would have more options to station assets to put pressure on Ukraine and NATO
at any time the Kremlin wanted. For example, an annexation of Belarus would put Russia’s western
border at the Suwalki Gap, a narrow line that stretches from Russian Kaliningrad to Belarus’
western border, near Grodno. A pincer drive from Grodno and Kaliningrad would be able to cut
Poland off from Lithuania and isolate the Baltic States from the rest of NATO by land. However,
this option is not available to the Kremlin unless Belarus allows it.
Russia and Putin have long been contemptuous of the independence of Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania and eager to project more power into the Baltic. The threat of cutting
those states off from the rest of NATO overland would be a valuable strategic option for Russia
to be able to exercise in its foreign policy. An annexation of Belarus would mean that Russia
would no longer need to go through diplomatic channels to exercise its military leverage there.
Though Lukashenko is usually keen to please Russia, there is no guarantee that will be
the case in the future whenever Belarus gets a new leader, and Lukashenko has already diverged from
some of the Kremlin’s military goals in Ukraine. With Russia now isolated from much of the world,
the Kremlin will look for additional options to exert leverage over NATO, meaning the existence
of Belarus as a buffer state may no longer be within what it deems are its best interests.
In 2023 a 17-page leaked document from Moscow with the title “Strategic Goals
of the Russian Federation in Belarus” began to circulate. This document is one which Western
intelligence services view as authentic. Some of the document’s headlines include the
plan for Russia and Belarus to come under the same currency (presumably the Russian ruble),
taxation system, and military command by 2030. These goals would be in line for the project
of a so-called “Greater Russia,” a notion that Vladimir Putin brought up in early 2022 with a
5,000 word essay that is now seen as his ideological reasoning for starting the war
in Ukraine. Putin’s declared annexation of the occupied territories in Ukraine,
where local residents have been told they are now considered Russian citizens and
should for Russian passports, would also be consistent with the “Greater Russia” idea,
and it is also consistent with the Kremlin’s supposed goals in Belarus.
The “Strategic Goals of the Russian Federation in Belarus” document goes over short, medium,
and long-term goals for the Kremlin in Belarus. The short-term goals include a greater voice for
Russia in Belarussian domestic politics, including a reform to its constitution to
serve Russian interests. It also intends to limit pro-Western dissent in that country of the type
seen after the 2020 election there. Lukashenko has already largely acceded to these demands.
In the intermediate term, all Belarussian citizens would be able to obtain Russian
passports, an expression of the same policy that Russia is doing in the
territories it currently occupies in Ukraine. In the long term, Russia would seek to control
information in Belarus and forge a shared national identity through media and cultural connections,
among others. Russian news and Russian pop culture would drown out other sources
of information within Belarus. 2030 is an ambitious goal for such
a far-reaching project, but according to the document, that is Moscow’s aim.
Although this document might seem like a revolution, it is actually only an
acceleration of longstanding Russian policy. Reportedly, Russia has had plans to annex
Belarus as early as 1999, the year Vladimir Putin first assumed power. That year,
Russia and Belarus signed the Agreement on the Establishment of the Union State. Some years
later, when Russia granted its smaller neighbor a discount on its oil exports,
Belarus needed to make more concessions in return. These concessions included Moscow assuming more
and more political influence in Minsk. Lukashenko, though close with Russia,
had tried to retain as much autonomy as he could while remaining largely
sympathetic to Russian interests. 2020 would prove a turning point, however.
The troubles in Belarus between 2020 and 2021 gave the Kremlin even more influence there. With
the help of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, the Belarussian security apparatus put down
the anti-government wave of protests that emerged in the wake of the questionable 2020 presidential
election in Belarus. There was a price to be paid for this support, however. Lukashenko now
owed Moscow even more for his position. As early as March 2021, almost a year before the invasion
of Ukraine, the Atlantic Council was warning of Russia’s coming “soft takeover” of Belarus.
According to the Atlantic Council, this “soft takeover” of Belarus would not be something
“spectacular” like the way Russia intervened in Ukraine in 2014 or in Georgia in 2008. Instead,
it would be a “frog in boiling water” operation. The oil discounts from years earlier were part
of this. Lukashenko had been resisting Moscow’s insistence that he export the refined petroleum
products that came from this discounted oil through Russian ports. He instead routed
them through ports in NATO members Latvia and Lithuania. The move ensured that the
Belarussian economy would not be completely dependent on Russia. But in early 2021,
Lukashenko changed course and Belarus is now exporting these products through Russian ports.
Russia’s helping him out of the domestic troubles he faced in 2020 and 2021 came with consequences.
Meanwhile, even before the war in Ukraine, Russia was steadily building up a large
military presence in Belarus. Shortly before the invasion, Russia and Belarus signed a five-year
strategic partnership agreement that would see the construction of three joint military centers. Two
would be in Russian territory. The third would be in the western Grodno region of Belarus,
near the Suwalki Gap. Lukashenko also conceded that Russia would be able to build a new
Russian airbase on Belarussian territory, an effort he had resisted for a long time.
In 2022, even after the failed attempt to take Kyiv, Russia still maintained a significant
military presence in Belarus. In the fall of that year, it stationed 9,000 troops on the
border between Belarus and Ukraine, hoping to tie down Ukrainian forces in that area and prevent
them from reinforcing the fronts near Kharkhiv and Kherson, where Ukraine was retaking vast
swathes of captured territory from the invaders. According to the leaked annexation document,
the Russian military presence in Belarus will continue to expand until it becomes permanent
and the Belarussian army is subordinated to the Russian one. This would be one of
its long-term goals to be achieved by 2030. Despite all of Russia’s far-reaching aims,
the Atlantic Council does not expect there to be a formal, lawful annexation of Belarus. Rather,
the Russian expanding intervention in Belarus will be more like a grey zone operation. Russia
would be in control of Belarus in fact, while leaving its current borders formally intact.
For Putin and the Kremlin, it would be better to make these moves now, with Lukashenko still in
power. The unrest following the heavily-criticized election of 2020 must have made Moscow remember
what happened in Ukraine between 2013 and 2014. The last thing the Kremlin would want to see is a
similar regime change in Belarus, which could take that country, too, further into the orbit of the
West and away from Russia. Putin’s intervention in favor of Lukashenko came with consequences
of their own, as his propping up of the dictator made the people of Belarus less trustful of Russia
and more pro-Western in sentiment. Shades of the Maidan movement in Ukraine almost a decade earlier
were impossible to ignore for Moscow, and this may have sped up the long-held annexation plans.
These underlying tensions may be a problem for Russia as it supposedly begins to
deploy some of its nuclear weapons on bases in Belarussian territory.
On June 14th, 2023, Lukashenko announced that his country had started to take delivery of
some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, which, according to him,
were up to three times as powerful as the bombs the United States dropped on Japan at the end of
World War II. If this is true, it would be the first time that Russia has deployed part of its
nuclear arsenal on non-Russian territory since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia of course
would retain its control of the nuclear weapons. Putin stated that these weapons would be deployed
upon completion of special storage facilities on the territory of its smaller neighbor. Russia’s
dictator partially justified the plan, which came in the face of international opposition,
by pointing out how the United States had deployed its own nuclear arsenal on the soils
of allied countries over many decades. In other words, he said he was creating
something like a Russian nuclear umbrella to rival the longstanding American version.
Lukashenko declared that Belarus still had nuclear storage facilities from the Soviet era and would
be fixing them to host the new weapons. In an earlier statement, he declared his
willingness and ability to host longer range missiles, presumably capable of delivering
strategic nuclear warheads, if the need arose. Lukashenko’s justification for the deployment of
these weapons was that Belarus “had always been a target” and needed them for deterrence, especially
in the wake of the West’s attempt to topple him following the 2020 election, according to him.
It is important to understand that both Putin and Belarus’ dictator are known
for using hyperbolic rhetoric. It has not yet been independently confirmed that Russia has
begun delivering some of its nuclear weapons onto Belarussian soil as of July 10th 2023.
If delivery has not yet begun, Russia may get second thoughts. For Moscow,
the deployment of these weapons on the territory of a still-independent country,
even one that it has close ties with, comes at the price of several risks.
Although the Belarussian government will not have control over these weapons, its agreeing
to act as a host nevertheless exposes Russia to risk. Recall that in the Belgorod raid from May,
two groups of dissident Russian fighters came within miles of a nuclear weapons storage
facility. Unlike the United States’ network of allies and nuclear umbrella partners, Belarus is
far from a stable country. The world witnessed that first-hand in 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile,
the Russians have unfortunately shown that they cannot always be relied on to keep their
nuclear weapons stored without worries. What if instability in Belarus springs up again?
Belarus’ constitution mandates another formal election in 2025, the year that Russia wishes
to meet some of its intermediate goals in its supposed annexation plan. Suppressing any
unrest that springs up in Belarus in response to the coming unfree and unfair election will
be a high priority for Russia. The presence of nuclear weapons in Belarus raises the stakes.
In an interview for The Times Radio, William Courtney, the former Special Assistant for
Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the Clinton administration, noted that pilots from the
United States’ NATO allies are trained to deliver American nuclear weapons from their respective
countries’ soil as part of the standard operating procedure for the alliance. “That involves a level
of trust that the Russians would never have in the Belarussians,” Courtney said in the interview,
“because the Belarussian pilot might go in the opposite direction with that nuclear weapon,”
east, rather than west. He brought up the 2020 and 2021 protests against Lukashenko and by extension,
Russian influence in Belarus. It is little wonder why some Belarussian elements might
seize the opportunity to use nuclear leverage over Russia if they got the chance, and why the
Russians do not trust them like the United States trusts its NATO allies. This is why suppressing
nationalist sentiments is a key short-term goal outlined in Russia’s leaked document about its
supposed annexation plans in Belarus. And then there is Lukashenko himself.
It is Human nature to seek more power and possessions, but an even stronger desire
is to not lose the things one already has. This is especially true of power. Powerful people do
not want to lose their power. This would be particularly so with someone like Alexander
Lukashenko, who has exercised power in almost unlimited form for 30 years. Lukashenko may
usually be eager to please his overlord Putin, but that does not mean he is eager to do so at
the cost of losing his own position, should the so-called “Union State” between Russia and Belarus
evolve into outright annexation. Unfortunately for Belarus’ longstanding dictator, he is running
out of options. He is trapped between the West refusing to recognize his legitimacy and Russia,
which seems to be accelerating its plans to annex Belarus and leave him a ceremonial figure at best.
For three decades, Lukashenko had been able to keep the Kremlin mostly pleased
while also maintaining most of his initiative to govern Belarus as he saw fit. The disputed
2020 election in Belarus and Moscow’s subsequent intervention to put down the unrest between then
and early 2021 changed the balance of power, though, shifting it yet more in Russia’s favor.
The balance of power again changed after the invasion of Ukraine and Lukashenko lost even
more clout in his relationship with Putin. How might he be able to claw some of it back?
One way that Belarus’ dictator might try to regain some leverage in the bilateral relationship with
Russia could be to use the nuclear weapons that he is supposedly about to host on his
soil as a form of leverage. Although he will not be able to actually launch these weapons,
he does control the territory from which they would be based and supplied. Lukashenko can use
his control of that territory to attempt to demand concessions from the Kremlin.
That is only speculation, but the Russian plan to annex Belarus exposes that the
two countries’ partnership is not all that it seems. The interests of dictators do not tend
to make for a long, stable partnership. Their views of the world can diverge quickly, and
their people tend to have concerns of their own. Russia once thought that Ukraine was safely in its
orbit, too, until its people looked to the west and refused further integration with the Russian
economy, revolting against the ruling regime in Kyiv to ensure that would not happen. When new,
pro-Western leaders came to power in Kyiv, Ukraine’s long-running status as being
within Russia’s sphere of influence deteriorated rapidly, to the extent that Russia is now fighting
a costly war to keep Ukraine in its orbit. But what do you think? Might the same thing
one day happen in Belarus? Or might Lukashenko or an authoritarian successor of his prove
a less than trustworthy partner for a Russian version of the nuclear umbrella? Let us know in
the comments and don’t forget to subscribe for more military analysis from military experts.