Speaking in an interview with Sky News on Monday, Mar. 27, David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelensky's "Servant of the People" party in the Ukrainian parliament, warned that Ukraine should be prepared for an increased mobilization if Russia hands over nuclear weapons to Belarus.
"While we don't believe that this will happen, the events of the past year have shown that anything is possible. No one believed, for instance, that Russia would invade on such scale," Arakhamia said.
If Belarus acquires nuclear weapons from Russia, it could lead to the opening of a second front.
"This could mean recruiting more people into the army. We would need at least eight more brigades to control this front line," Arakhamia explained.
The lawmaker also pointed out that, luckily, the terrain in the potential front-line area is difficult, with swamps making it challenging for an attacker to make significant progress.
Puzzled by the link drawn by Arakhamia between the positioning of tactical nuclear weapons and the need for more troops, Kyiv Post approached his office for clarification of his comments. We were advised to seek such clarification from the military.
Putin's announcement on to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus has been heavily criticized by officials in Europe and the United States.
Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, has expressed the view that if the Kremlin deploys its nuclear weapons to Belarus, it is effectively holding its supposed ally hostage.
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Comments ( 1)
Deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus wont make much difference to NATO or Ukraine, because Russian aircraft or cruise missiles can already launch tactical nuclear weapons from Russian areas bordering Ukraine, and possibly from Donbas and Kherson.
However, most of Russia's modern NBC filtered armored personnel carriers and tanks have been destroyed, together with their trained crews.
The remaining mostly older equipment and relatively inexperienced crews are almost certainly not capable of executing and exploiting quick advances around or through a battlefield contaminated with radio active fall out, or chemical or bacteriological agents.
Consequently the Russian Army can no longer take any advantage from the use of tactical nukes, and such threats can rightfully be discounted, as long as Russian territory is not invaded.