Vladimir Putin loves to terrify Western societies with more or less subtle nuclear threats. The latest number: the Kremlin ruler’s announcement that nuclear weapons will be stationed in neighboring Belarus. Many in the West will perceive this as a new threat scenario in the current war. In fact, however, this had already become apparent before the renewed Russian attack on Ukraine.
For Belarus, meanwhile, 27 years of freedom from nuclear weapons are coming to an end. In 1996, the transfer of the last Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia was celebrated with great fanfare. After all, like Kazakhstan and Ukraine, Belarus was part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia pledged to recognize the three countries’ borders in exchange for Moscow getting the nuclear weapons stationed in the former Soviet republics.
