Russia and Belarus Rehearse Nuclear Missiles

As part of a joint war drill, Russia and Belarus are rehearsing the launch of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday. According to state media, the Belarusian chief of staff said that the exercise also featured Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile, the same one test-fired last year in the war with Ukraine.

The five-day war game between Russia and Belarus is a show of force designed to test their combat readiness. But along with that, it also serves the purpose of unnerving some surrounding countries amid the ongoing war. Western military analysts suggest that this war game is intended to intimidate Europe, just days after Polish and NATO forces said they shot down Russian drones that entered Polish airspace. As a result, Warsaw has temporarily closed its borders with Belarus as a precaution.

Belarus has remained a close Russian ally. It shares borders with Ukraine and Russia, as well as NATO members Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Russian tactical nuclear weapons, which Moscow retains command and control over, are stationed in the region. Minsk is also reportedly working to reopen and renovate its Soviet-era nuclear storage facilities, while Lukashenko was cited as saying that it was only natural for Russian tactical nuclear weapons to be part of the Zapad drill.

“We are practising everything, and they know this too. We are not hiding it—from firing conventional small arms to nuclear warheads. Again, we must be able to do all this; otherwise, why would they be on Belarusian territory? But we are absolutely not planning to threaten anyone with this,” said Lukashenko.

The Belarusian defence ministry also confirmed that the use of tactical nuclear weapons had been rehearsed along with the deployment of Russia’s intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which Moscow fired at the UK for the first time on November 21 last year.