Russia and Belarus conduct nuclear weapons drills amid NATO tensions

On a Monday in May, Belarus and Russia announced they had begun joint military exercises designed to practice the movement and deployment of nuclear weapons across Belarusian territory. The drills would involve missile units and combat aircraft working through scenarios for transporting nuclear munitions and preparing them for use, according to a statement from Belarus's Defense Ministry. The exercises, the ministry said, were not directed at any particular country and posed no threat to regional security—a familiar disclaimer that did little to calm the alarm spreading across Eastern Europe.

The nuclear weapons now being rehearsed in these drills arrived in Belarus over the past three years through a series of strategic decisions by President Alexander Lukashenko. In 2023, a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, Lukashenko agreed to host Russian tactical nuclear missiles on Belarusian soil. Then, in December of the previous year, Russia announced that its new intermediate-range missile system, the Oreshnik, had entered service in the country. The Oreshnik—its name means hazelnut in Russian—is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and has a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Russia has already used the conventional version of this missile twice against targets in Ukraine, in November 2024 and again in January 2026, claiming it travels at speeds up to Mach 10 and cannot be intercepted.

Vladimir Putin has been explicit about one thing: Russia retains full control over these weapons. In a revised nuclear doctrine published in 2024, the Kremlin placed Belarus under its nuclear umbrella, though Putin has suggested that in the event of conflict, his Belarusian ally might be permitted to select targets. This arrangement represents a significant shift in the region's military posture. The intermediate-range missiles themselves had been prohibited under a Cold War-era treaty until the United States and Russia both withdrew from that agreement in 2019.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the exercises immediately and called on Western allies to impose harsher sanctions against both Russia and Belarus. The ministry's statement carried a warning about precedent: by converting Belarus into a nuclear platform on NATO's doorstep, the Kremlin was effectively legitimizing nuclear weapons proliferation and setting an example that other authoritarian regimes might follow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had raised concerns the week before, suggesting that Russia was attempting to draw Belarus deeper into the war and might be preparing to launch attacks from Belarusian territory against northern Ukraine or against a NATO member state. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov dismissed these allegations as inflammatory rhetoric designed to prolong the conflict and escalate tensions.

Lukashenko has governed Belarus, a nation of 9.5 million people, for more than thirty years. His government has faced repeated Western sanctions for suppressing human rights and for allowing Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But within Belarus itself, opposition voices have grown sharper. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader, characterized the nuclear deployment as having turned Belarus into a target. She argued that Lukashenko had transformed the country into a platform for Russian threats, and that Belarusians had no need for these weapons. A free Belarus, she said, would be a source of security in Europe, not nuclear blackmail.

The timing of these exercises reflects a broader pattern of Russian military modernization. Putin announced the same week that Russia would deploy its new Sarmat nuclear missile before the year's end and would continue upgrading its nuclear arsenal. The drills in Belarus are one piece of a larger strategic repositioning—a demonstration of capability and resolve at a moment when the war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending and NATO's eastern flank remains tense. For those watching from Warsaw, Tallinn, or Kyiv, the message was unmistakable: Russia's nuclear weapons were no longer abstract deterrents. They were now being actively practiced, rehearsed, and positioned in a country that shares a border with multiple NATO members.