At least they are letting people know about it.
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I’d be interested to know the logic behind this one. While they do it sometimes, if the location is really favorable, people generally aren’t thrilled about putting warheads outside their own direct control; and moving from within Russia to within Belarus doesn’t save that many minutes as-the-delivery-vehicle-flies; and(both because it’s tactical nukes being moved and because ICBM range has been ‘global’ for some time) it doesn’t make for any obvious change in terms of nuclear threats and deterrence.
Is it some sort of sabre rattling exercise in service of the ‘not letting us have what we want is provocative and irresponsible’ narrative? Does someone actually expect Ukrainian and/or NATO units to be blitzing into Belarus with the sort of speed and surprise where being able to Davy Crockett locally stored tactical warheads at them is the only option?
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I would guess that the point is to raise the spectre of “loose nukes” if Lukashenko’s regime is overthrown by an invasion or a popular uprising. Russian nuclear weapons guarded by Russian soldiers would be the ultimate guarantee that Lukashenko (or whoever Russia decides to install) will remain in power.
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I would suggest that that’s the point: Belarus is under Putin’s direct control. It is a wholly owned satrapy.
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Or at least, it is now, given that these nuclear weapons will need to be guarded by troops who can conveniently be re-pointed towards Minsk if Belarus gets too independent in its thinking.
I agree that it does nothing tactically, if only because there are almost certainly nukes in Kaliningrad already.
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The nukes in Kaliningrad are probably there for the same reason: to stop the “collective West” overrunning the place without the need for a massive garrison.
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That, plus the idea of “oh, you want to put missile defence or early warning radar in Poland or the Baltics? Too bad, we’re behind you already.”
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Yes, Russians were prepared for a re-do of the Katyn massacres. Kill off the politicians, the scholars, the clergy, the officers, the teachers, the journalists, the authors, in order to destroy the Ukrainian identity, the language and the culture. It was a planned genocide, and it was perilously close to happening.
And that’s what every last one of those “Let’s have a negotiated peace in Ukraine to stop the war!” idiots is endorsing, though I’m sure the great majority of them have no idea that’s what they are doing.
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