Russian Armed Forces have initiated a three-day set of nuclear weapons exercises in Belarus amid allegations of Putin plotting an “invasion of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania”.
The drills, scheduled until Thursday, encompass over 64,000 military personnel and more than 7,800 units of equipment. Belarus has commenced nuclear weapons exercises in conjunction with Russia to enhance the readiness of the armed forces in utilizing modern destructive means, including special ammunition, as declared by the Belarusian Defence Ministry on Monday.
During these drills, Belarusian citizens have been forbidden from entering forests near the borders with Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine.
Volya, a war monitoring channel, cautioned that misinformation indicates Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering a limited incursion into the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, rather than planning a summer offensive in Ukraine’s Donbas region. This move would serve as a significant test for NATO.
Volya stated, “Alarming signs in this direction are increasingly prevalent. Since mid-March, we have been receiving confirmations from sources within the Russian Ministry of Defence and other entities that Vladimir Putin’s intentions to invade the Baltic states have progressed to the next phase.”
The objective is not to incite a conflict with NATO but to provoke a major crisis within the alliance by invading Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, with the ultimate goal of causing its effective disintegration.
Additionally, Putin is reportedly amassing hundreds of thousands of “unkillable” fiber-optic drones in secret for a potential future assault on NATO, according to sources of the channel.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry condemned the three-day exercises, denouncing Russia and Belarus’ nuclear collaboration as “an unparalleled challenge to global security frameworks”. It emphasized that the drills breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by involving a non-nuclear state in activities linked to the use of nuclear weapons.
A statement expressed concerns about Belarus being transformed into a nuclear stronghold near NATO borders, asserting that this legitimizes the global spread of nuclear weapons and establishes a hazardous precedent for other authoritarian regimes.
