Atomic heads

What is the essence of the nuclear exercises that are being held on the territory of Belarus with the participation of the Russian military?

The Ministry of Defense of Belarus announced the start of joint exercises with the Russian Federation on the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear support under the command of the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Republic of Belarus Pavel Muraveiko. The delivery and preparation for the use of nuclear weapons will be worked out. In particular, commanders will check the readiness of combat use from unplanned areas. This is an important detail.

After the attack of Ukrainian light drones on Russian airfields, which led to the damage and destruction of strategic bombers (Operation Web), the safety of all strategic aviation of the nuclear five countries - also permanent members of the UN Security Council - as well as Russian and Chinese nuclear mobile ground-based missile systems (Yars type) was called into question. Only nuclear weapons on submarines and in missile silos remained fully protected.

But Russian nuclear warheads (in addition to aerial bombs) deployed on Belarusian territory since 2023 on Iskander missiles are installed on the Belarusian MZKT-7930 chassis. “Oreshnik”, which is currently unfolding there, is set up in the same way. Therefore, it was decided to urgently learn how to transfer these wheeled vehicles to unexpected places, just so that drone operators would not be able to figure out where to fly. This is called “from unplanned areas”.

After all, during the “Web,” drones attacked huge, stationary airfields.

This attempt to avoid a pre-emptive drone strike is the main goal of the exercise. After all, to disable an operational or strategic missile, a hit from one quadcopter with an area the size of two palms is enough.

These new problems concern all owners of nuclear weapons. The German Ministry of Defense has just announced that Germany will deploy Patriot air defense systems in southeastern Turkey amid the conflict over Iran. What did they urgently rush to defend? Of course, the Incirlik NATO base, where American nuclear weapons are stored. This is understandable: if drones from Ukraine are waiting at the Belarusian storage bases, then they will fly to the Turkish ones from Iran.

The training of units for servicing nuclear weapons of Lukashenko’s army is discussed by the European media. Of course, they are seen as a step on the path of nuclear escalation. In fact, this is an inevitable stage after Lukashenko agreed to host Russian nuclear weapons on his territory. It was this act that triggered the entire subsequent chain of events.

The nuclearization of Eastern Europe after Lukashenko’s decision is no longer a fantasy. Finnish politicians have called on the United States to host nuclear weapons. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has just called on NATO to consider the possibility of a preventive attack on Kaliningrad: “Lithuania has come to terms with the possibility of an imminent war with Russia.”

This courage is confusingly similar to irresponsibility. Behind the demonstrative readiness of the Baltic and Finnish politicians to host nuclear weapons is the desire to show their inflexibility in the same way as the Belarusian commander-in-chief and permanent leader does. But at the same time, behind this courage there is an underlying confidence:

there will be no war, these are all games. The fact that you can play too much is taken into account only after something has happened, that is, in hindsight.

A responsible politician calculates the real cost of his action for the country, a populist calculates its cost for his rating. The irreconcilable position of the Russian armchair generals rests on exactly the same secret conviction that it will never come to the real use of the atomic bomb. There are many politicians and bloggers in our country who demand that the conflict with Ukraine be resolved with tactical nuclear weapons. The woman-mother Margarita Simonyan looks very bright in this row.

To begin with, these enthusiasts of nuclear blackmail propose to deploy missiles and bombs in positions and demonstrate readiness. All this does not happen out of the blue. These are the signs from above. Last year, Defense Minister Belousov suggested on camera that Putin should withdraw from the nuclear test ban.

Today, the only effective instrument of influence of the Kremlin on the military policy of Europe remains nuclear weapons.

To ensure that NATO troops do not enter the territory of Ukraine, it is deployed in Belarus. In the future, all technical manipulations with it will become planned, and thus become part of a multi-level containment system.

Washington is planning counter steps. The newest high-precision medium-range operational-tactical missiles Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) were developed by Lockheed Martin to replace the outdated ATACMS missiles. Their range in the future will exceed 2000 km; of course, they are also being created with nuclear equipment. First of all, they began to be deployed at bases around China.

But these missiles were initially, long before the appearance of Oreshnik, planned for deployment in Eastern Europe. If there are no drastic political changes in the Old World, the world will return to the situation before 1987, and all the efforts of Reagan and Gorbachev will go to waste. We are still at an intermediate stage of this degradation process.