Russia is ready to deploy Iskander complexes in Belarus

The Kremlin does not rule out that the nuclear loaded complexes could be redeployed in Belarus.

A military observer Aliaksandr Alesin writes about this in his article on the Belarusian News web-site.

The expert believes that the reason for the redeployment of Inskander complexes to Belarus may be the plans to create a NATO base in Poland. It is assumed that arms, ammunition and provisions will be deployed at the base, so it would be possible to ensure the supplies for the alliance’s combat units in short terms. It is expected that the issue of the creation of a largest NATO base in Eastern Europe will be discussed at the North Atlantic alliance’s upcoming summit in UK.

According to Aliaksandr Alesin, this information caused a response from Russian analysts. Their general point of view was briefly expressed by an international politics scholar Mikhail Aleksandrov, an MGIMO professor. In his opinion, one of the options for Moscow’s adequate response would be increased military presence at the frontier: in Belarus, at the borders with the Baltic States, in Kaliningrad region. For example, Russia could “demonstratively deploy nuclear weapons there”. Most likely it will have to spend quite a fortune on that, because the situation has already passed well beyond all the thinkable crisis limits, the professor assumes.

However, the circumstance is most alerting that Russia’s higher military and political leadership has the same view in the face of Vladimir Putin.

Recently at a Security Council meeting he claimed that NATO’s military presence was “demonstratively” increasing: “And we will react adequately and proportionally to NATO military infrastructure’s approaching our borders”. In this regard, according to the Russian leader, “it is necessary to fully and timely implement all the planned measures for strengthening the country’s defense capability”.

Many analysts agree that one of such measures would be the deployment of Iskander nuclear weapons at the Western frontier of the “union state of Belarus and Russia”. Today this complex looks not so much a weapon of destruction, a quite effective one, it must be said, but also a weighty instrument of geopolitics.