Belarus and Russia rehearse tactical nuclear delivery as Minsk dismisses alarm and Kyiv cries escalation

Belarus said Monday it had opened joint drills with Russia built around tactical nuclear weapons Moscow already stations on Belarusian soil, according to Associated Press reporting carried by Yahoo News.

The same dispatches remind readers that President Alexander Lukashenko authorized those deployments and that, in December, Russia announced its intermediate-range, nuclear-capable Oreshnik system was entering service in a country that borders Ukraine as well as NATO allies Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry said missile units and warplanes would take part. In a written statement quoted by the AP, it said planners intend, together with Russian counterparts, to rehearse “the delivery of nuclear weapons and preparations for their use,” with part of the curriculum devoted to covert movement across long distances.

Officials insisted the maneuvers were scheduled well ahead of time and were “not aimed against any third countries,” language NATO capitals have learned to parse carefully because similar assurances have coincided with other shows of force along the alliance’s eastern rim.

Al Jazeera and Euronews transmitted the same day’s diplomatic counterpoint: Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry condemned the choreography as evidence Moscow is using Belarus as a nuclear staging strip near NATO, with language Al Jazeera summarised as warning that posture could normalise proliferation pressures worldwide. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added a battlefield headline—telling outlets Russia might be preparing another offensive from Belarus—while Al Jazeera separately quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov brushing off that reading as war-prolonging spin rather than fresh intelligence.

Hardware and recent firing history the wire emphasises

Associated Press copy notes that Russia has twice fired a conventionally armed variant of the Oreshnik—Russian for hazelnut—against targets in Ukraine, in November 2024 and again in January. The story relays President Vladimir Putin’s public claims about hypersonic-speed warheads that cannot be intercepted and his argument that salvos of conventional Oreshniks could rival nuclear devastation.

For readers weighing escalation risk, the piece also supplies textbook range context: intermediate-range systems can cover roughly 500–5,500 kilometres (310–3,400 miles), a class of weapon once constrained by the INF Treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.

Doctrine, command, and domestic blowback

The AP version of events cites the Kremlin’s 2024 revision of its nuclear doctrine placing Belarus under Moscow’s nuclear umbrella, and it quotes Putin as saying Russia will retain custody of warheads deployed in Belarus while still allowing Minsk to “select the targets” if a conflict ever crossed that threshold.

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told the AP the Russian deployments have “turned Belarus into a target.” She accused Lukashenko of converting the country into “a platform for Russian threats,” adding, “Only a free Belarus will become a source of security, not nuclear blackmail, in Europe.” Her remarks land alongside reminders in the same reporting that Lukashenko’s government remains under Western sanctions for internal repression and for facilitating Russia’s February 2022 invasion launch from Belarusian territory.

What remains analytically open

A ministry press statement is not an order of battle: it does not say how many crews rotate through each phase, which dispersal fields are active, or whether any live nuclear custodianship trains leave garrison.

NATO planners will nonetheless treat the choreography as another data point on dual-capable systems sitting minutes in flight time from multiple allied capitals. Until independent monitors publish imagery or seismic traces, outside analysts are stuck inferring risk from doctrine documents, rhetoric, and the same cautious official sentences Minsk insists are meant to calm the neighbours.