Therefore, to avoid a strike on its own territory, it decided to place another, formally still independent country under that strike.

VI. WHY NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN BELARUS

The Kremlin’s decision to deploy Russian nuclear weapons on our territory was surprising from the start. Usually such weapons are placed in a guaranteed safe location, not in immediate proximity to a combat zone where they could come under an enemy strike, and not on the territory of another state whose people do not want them—because intuitively people understand: one’s own nuclear weapons do defend a country from aggression, while someone else’s make it a hostage of another state that may have completely different plans and interests unknown to us. Especially since Putin immediately and categorically refused any form of Belarusian control over these weapons. All those claims that we now “have nuclear weapons,” that “we will press the button together” (use Putin’s “nuclear briefcase”)—this is either deception or (much worse) self-deception.
First they announced the deployment of nuclear aerial bombs for aircraft (including Belarusian) Su-25s. Then—medium-range Iskander missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Now they are deploying the hybrid “Yars” (aka the “Oreshnik”). A storage facility for nuclear warheads is also being built.
Why on our land? If they want to be closer to a probable adversary, they have the Kaliningrad region, where nuclear-capable Iskanders already stand. The hybrid Yars has a range of 5,500 km—half that of the unmodified one. So deploy it at home—it will still reach any corner of Europe. But for some reason they place it near Ukraine. And since most of that “Yars” is simply a tube filled with propellant (solid rocket fuel), even an FPV drone with a shaped-charge grenade could turn a “Yars” into a “big bada-boom.” And transporting nuclear charges from storage to the missile positions when along the way there may be saboteurs, ambushes, mines—overall, isn’t that too risky? Yet this is all being done contrary to logic and security.
I find only one explanation for such risk: Russia’s first preventive strike on Europe is planned precisely from our territory. This will immediately be detected by the other side. And one local politician will not be able to resist boasting about his nuclear coolness. Then Western leaders will begin discussing response options. Where to strike back—on Russian territory, which has 1,400 strategic warheads, or take the safer option of striking the territory from which the missiles flew? And they will have a great temptation—on which the Kremlin counts—to choose the latter. The logic would be: “Belarusians are, of course, a pity. But we can’t start a global nuclear war. Besides, they are already co-aggressors for the second time. And this way we save face too: we respond, and we don’t start a world war.”
In Moscow they would reason roughly like this: “Belarusians, of course, are a pity. But they themselves want to be sovereign. Let them take the full sovereign program. At least our territory will remain intact.”
Thus, our country is simply being used as bait for NATO strikes in order to protect Russia from them.
NATO strikes, obviously, would be delivered with 500-kiloton thermonuclear warheads and would be aimed at the locations of nuclear munitions and their carriers—for example, at Asipovichy and Krychau, and possibly also at the rear areas and communications of Russian invasion groups in the Baltics, which would also be on our territory. Half a megaton is a very serious yield: the blast wave, the zone of destruction and fires would spread for hundreds of kilometers; almost all of Belarus would have air polluted by radioactive smoke from fires. For comparison, the yield of the nuclear bomb detonated by the Americans over Hiroshima was 18 kilotons. From the consequences of that explosion, over several years about half a million Japanese died.