R

ussia has staged one of its largest military exercises since the invasion of Ukraine, showcasing nuclear-capable weapons alongside conventional forces in drills with Belarus that NATO officials say mark a dangerous escalation of Europe’s security crisis.

The Zapad-2025 maneuvers, which began last week, involved thousands of troops, warships, nuclear-capable bombers, and hundreds of combat vehicles. Moscow highlighted scenarios that included the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons and unveiled deployment options for its new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which it says will soon be stationed in Belarus.

The display came just days after about 20 Russian drones breached Polish airspace, which Warsaw condemned as a “provocation” and NATO described as reckless. In response, the alliance announced a new “Eastern Sentry” initiative to reinforce air defenses across Poland and the Baltic states. “Within this alliance of 32 countries, we all live on the eastern flank,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in Brussels, underscoring that the threat extends far beyond frontline states.

Lowered nuclear threshold

The exercises are the first since Moscow revised its nuclear doctrine in 2024, declaring that any conventional attack on Russia involving a nuclear-armed ally of Ukraine would be treated as a joint nuclear strike. Analysts say this change significantly lowers the threshold for nuclear use. Belarus, now formally under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, has already hosted Russian tactical nuclear weapons and is expected to receive Oreshnik systems later this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted that Oreshnik’s warheads can reach speeds of Mach 10 and strike European capitals within minutes, making it impossible to know whether they carry conventional or nuclear payloads until impact. Military analysts warn that their forward deployment in Belarus effectively restores a Cold War-style “nuclear fortress” on NATO’s doorstep.

NATO scrambles to respond

The alliance’s rapid announcement of Eastern Sentry reflects growing fears of miscalculation. Germany, France, and the Netherlands are contributing aircraft and missile defense systems, while Poland is closing sections of its eastern airspace and accelerating its military modernization program. “This brings us closer to open conflict, closer than ever since World War II,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned.

Defense experts caution that NATO faces a costly dilemma: intercepting Russia’s low-cost drones with advanced fighter jets is unsustainable. Calls are growing for investments in layered counter-drone defenses, a lesson drawn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience.

For Russia, the drills send a political message as much as a military one: that it retains escalation dominance despite its grinding war in Ukraine. For NATO, the challenge is to reinforce deterrence without triggering direct confrontation.

“This is a dangerous moment,” a senior NATO official told reporters. “We must be firm, but we must also avoid giving Moscow the escalation it is trying to provoke.”

With the U.N. General Assembly set to meet later this month, the Zapad exercises and drone provocations ensure that Russia’s confrontation with the West will dominate the agenda — and keep Europe on edge as the war in Ukraine drags into its fourth year.

(Source: The Associated Press)

The war in Ukraine has brought about a significant change in the politics of alliance between Russia and Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko provided the territory of Belarus for Russia’s deployment of its military equipment, which allowed for missile launches and the deployment of ground forces heading towards Ukraine. The Belarusian regime was condemned for its decision to support Russia, eventually becoming the target of further sanctions due to the “support for, and facilitation of, the invasion” of Ukraine by Russia, which were introduced by the United States on February 24, and followed by the UK and Japan shortly after.

The alignment of the Belarusian position with the Russian one has been unprecedented. Prior to 2020, both allies had concerns about the other’s reliability, producing a tension known as “intra-alliance security dilemma” that is underpinned by a combination of two internal forces: the “fear of abandonment,” which refers to being deserted or losing support (including political) based on the perception of a risk that the partner will defect in the face of significant costs emerging from prospective actions; and the “fear of entrapment,” which refers to the possibility of being dragged, via one’s alliance commitments, into a conflict over interests held by an ally, even though one might not be a party to those interests.

Considering the state of the Russia-Belarus alliance politics in 2022, the Russian fear of (political) abandonment was mitigated given the mutual solidarity of the two authoritarian countries’ leaders shifting into dictatorship. When Vladimir Putin’s extended support to Lukashenko in the aftermath of mass social protests and the political crisis in 2020, he guaranteed Lukashenko’s political survival, at a time when the West, responding to mass human rights violations, repressions, and torture in Belarus, started to adopt sanctions.

Russia and Belarus: Mutual support

Russia’s unwavering support continued in May 2021, after the forced landing of Ryanair Flight 4978 and during the 2021-2022 migration crisis at Belarus’s borders with its Western neighboring countries (provoking a ban on EU aircraft flying over Belarus in addition to further, and more extensive, sanctions packages).

Lukashenko’s alignment with the position of Russia on the war in Ukraine may not be fully surprising, but it does stand in stark contrast with the previous policy. Prior to 2020, and especially following 2014 Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, the Belarusian regime was highly conscious of the implications of Moscow’s growing control over Belarus, including via the rapid exploitation of unrest. Back then, Belarus’ active Western diplomacy and Belarusian divergence from the Russian position on a number of points earned Belarus the title of Russia’s “containing ally.”

Today, however, the Belarusian regime is endorsing Moscow’s controversial decisions, including, a de jure recognition of Crimea as a part of the Russian Federation (which took Lukashenko over seven years). And in the days that marked the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Lukashenko, while reiterating that the Belarusian soldiers were not fighting in Ukraine, stated that they could be deployed in the future.

Who will pay a high price? 

Finally, Belarus and Ukraine are two Slavic nations that share a special affinity, and this makes a label of an aggressor towards a brotherly nation especially difficult to bear. The leadership and the population of Ukraine feels betrayed by Lukashenko who has been personally reassuring Kyiv for years that Belarus would not become a platform for aggression against Ukraine.

Even though the Belarusian society has no influence over the Belarusian regime, the war in Ukraine has been casting a shadow over the Belarusian people as a whole. Sudden mistrust and even ostracization have been reported by Belarusian volunteers in their contacts with the Polish and Ukrainian border guards and the Ukrainian population as a whole.

Prominent Belarusians who paid a high price for their position of openly condemning the Belarusian regime in 2020, such as  Melitina Staniouta, have also noted a distinctive treatment “due to the passport.” Reflections of such a changing position towards Belarusians as a whole have emerged, paradoxically, as anti-war protests have been spreading in Belarus – a country where any dissenting voice is a crime by definition, and where it takes no more than a retweet for one to be imprisoned.

Belarusian protesters are certainly aware of the mass and ongoing repressions in their country that have produced 1,076 officially recognized political prisoners as of March 1, 2022; of severe human rights violations; and of torture in prisons and detainment facilities. However, they have not stopped raising their voices, even after 800 protesters have been detained as of February 27.

As the war in Ukraine continues, the world needs to be reminded: the Belarusian regime and the people of Belarus are not the same. As suggested by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell, Belarusian protestors have to be applauded for their courage and support for Ukraine.

With hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to enter Europe since 2015, a common European Union policy on refugees has become an undeniable necessity. However, the EU has failed in dealing with the refugee crisis particularly in terms of carrying the burden equally among all member states. The crisis continues to this day and is dividing Europe above all other issues.

As no solution has been found by the EU countries, the crisis leaves thousands of refugees trapped at borders. The most recent example is the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe at the border between Belarus and Poland, where thousands of refugees are waiting to cross into Europe.

In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to enter Europe through Italy and Greece, and refugees have been searching for alternative routes into Europe. Poland, a member of the European Union, has become the new doorway to the EU, a route to build a better future.

Refugees are using this comparatively new migration route by way of Belarus. Refugees sell all their property in their home countries in order to afford the journey expenses to the Belarus border, while others are allegedly encouraged by the government of Belarus and given tourist visas and plane tickets to Minsk. As a result, in the last few months, nearly 2,000 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, have been trapped between Belarus and Poland.

Desperate refugees have tried to breach the Polish border with Belarus, and Polish troops have used water cannons and tear gas to stop them. Meanwhile, Poland has significantly increased its border security. Even though some managed to make it into Europe, most refugees tried to survive in these dire conditions until November 17, 2021, when they were moved into a refugee camp provided by the Belarusian government at the Kuznica-Bruzgi border crossing, only a kilometer from Poland.

The conditions in the shelters are very harsh with limited access to water, food, and medicine. The weather is freezing: below -10 degrees Celsius. There is no social distancing in light of the COVID19 pandemic and people claim to get one meal a day. Toilets and showers are housed separately from the shelters, and around 1,200 refugees live and sleep on blankets. Some have even lost their lives in these freezing conditions. At the same time, since Poland has strengthened its border fence, it seems nearly impossible to enter Europe.

Yet another political game is being played between Russia and the EU via Belarus. While Russia supports Belarus in the migrant crisis, it denies the involvement of Belarus in the migration cirsis and blames European countries for imposing sanctions on Belarus.

Even though by inviting migrants to enter the EU, Belarus is using them as a political tool, these desperate people flee their countries not because of Lukashenko’s invitation but because they have no other option. If they did not flee to Belarus, they would flee somewhere else. Rather than focusing on the humanitarian crises and on possible solutions, countries are blaming one another for political gains while the EU continues not to accept migrants.

At this very moment, there is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding at the EU border and a critical question remains unanswered: what is going to happen to the migrants on the Belarus and Poland border? What will happen to them if they refuse to return to their home countries?