Supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ultimately ends, there are few grounds for optimism regarding qualitative improvements in Europe’s relations with Russia. From a planning perspective, therefore, the safest assumption is that Russia will continue its current revanchist and anti-Western stance in coming years and will work hard to restore its military and economic potential after the fighting ends in Ukraine. Predictions by Western governments on how long the process of military reconstitution will take may vary, but it is obvious that for the foreseeable future, Russia will remain a threat not only to Ukraine but also to the security of all European countries.
In recent years, Russia has shown its willingness to operate aggressively in the so-called gray zone that lies between war and peace. Russian tactics have taken a number of unconventional forms, ranging from cyber attacks to influence operations and election interference, to targeted killings, sabotage attacks against critical infrastructure, and a plot to place incendiary devices aboard civilian and cargo aircraft. Few parts of Europe have been spared during the current period of heightened tensions, but it is logical to assume that frontline countries in Central Europe and the Nordic and Baltic regions will have the greatest reason to worry about Russian efforts to test NATO’s resolve and the sanctity of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which treats armed attacks on any NATO member as an attack on all members.
Given Belarus’s strategic location and transformation into a full-fledged Russian satellite in recent years, it is entirely reasonable to anticipate that Minsk could figure prominently in the future trajectory of the poisoned relationship between East and West. Just as the inner German border once preoccupied European defense planners, so too must security issues and scenarios involving Belarus become an important area of focus for NATO countries.
Meanwhile, the new U.S. administration is still at the earliest stages of formulating its policies toward frontline countries along Russia’s periphery, let alone Belarus. What is clear, however, is that President Donald Trump is eager to normalize relations with Moscow and to “get along” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. That is in stark contrast to most European capitals, which perceive Russia as the primary threat to their security. That widening gap in threat perceptions is aggravated by Trump’s insistence that Europe assume more of the cost of providing for its own security, and by concerns that the White House intends to rapidly reduce the U.S. troop presence in Europe and, in the process, devalue its commitment to the alliance.
That risk is real in the eyes of frontline countries that would be left most exposed by such a turn of events. Recent experience in Ukraine has shown that relying on the rational analysis of assumed risks and opportunities for the Kremlin is not always a reliable method of forecasting. Putin’s behavior since the beginning of the full-scale invasion has provided ample confirmation that he perceives risk and his own historical mission very differently from many external observers.
The Logic of Complicity
Thanks to its place on the map and its deep dependence on Russia, Belarus is now a constant source of risk and concern for all of its neighbors, except for Russia. That reality is unlikely to change so long as Belarus is led by a regime that owes its continued survival to Moscow’s economic and political support. Over the past five years, Belarus’s longtime ruler Alexander Lukashenko has moved closer to Russia and given Moscow plenty of leeway to use Belarus’s territory to menace Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Until 2020, Lukashenko had maintained a precarious balancing act between the West and Russia, soliciting rewards from each party in exchange for not moving closer to the other side. The key to this maneuvering was Minsk’s ability to treat relations with Russia like a pendulum. That flexibility came to an abrupt end due to the near-total rupture in relations with the West after the Lukashenko regime’s violent suppression of major protests in Belarus in summer 2020. Since then, the pendulum has been stuck firmly in the zone of Russian control.
In the run-up to and the initial phase of the full-scale invasion, Lukashenko provided Russia’s army and defense industry with everything that Belarus could give. Some 30,000–35,000 Russian troops massed inside Belarus in January and February 2022, and the main axis of the initial Russian ground assault on Kyiv was launched from Belarusian territory. In addition, Russian forces also used Belarusian territory for missile and air attacks on targets inside Ukraine. Following Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s unsuccessful mutiny in June 2023, Lukashenko allowed the remnants of Wagner to be based in Belarus until the Kremlin took full control of the private military company.
In mid-2023, Moscow and Minsk announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and held joint exercises in summer 2024. Following a surprise raid by Ukrainian troops on Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024, Lukashenko sought to stoke tensions along the Belarus-Ukraine border via a large deployment of Belarusian troops. In December 2024, Putin and Lukashenko announced plans to deploy nuclear-capable Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles to Belarus. The Oreshnik had been used in a high-profile attack on the Ukrainian city Dnipro in November 2024 as part of a Russian effort to intimidate the West after it began supporting Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory. Once again, Minsk willingly acted as a partner in that game.
Some steps were more symbolic, such as the bilateral security treaty signed in December 2024, which gave Russia the right to station troops and military facilities in Belarus in the event of an external threat. The document, which effectively extended Russia’s nuclear umbrella to Belarus, changed little in practical terms, but such symbolic acts create the image of Russia treating Belarus as a strategic outpost that must be fortified and defended. If anything, Belarus’s strategic importance for Putin has only grown over the course of the Ukraine war.
Out of sheer habit, Lukashenko continued his verbal attempts to demonstrate his independence. Yet such posturing was totally negated by the strategic significance of his involvement in the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine. Quite understandably, the West no longer paid him any heed and treated Lukashenko as the hapless sidekick of a belligerent, out-of-control Putin. From the first days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lukashenko called for immediate negotiations and offered to serve as a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow. But that rhetoric was no longer convincing, and any remaining room for Lukashenko to play a helpful role had disappeared.
Instead, Minsk’s game during this period has been straightforward: finding new ways to extract the greatest amount of resources and patronage from Russia. The key to that effort lay in the military sphere, given that such services were what Putin valued most.
Lukashenko’s motives are clear-cut: continued economic assistance and other support for his regime. Moscow offers him energy resources on preferential terms, deferred loan payments, and access to Russian ports and transportation infrastructure for the export of sanctioned Belarusian goods such as potash fertilizers. At the same time, the Kremlin has stopped short of demanding that Lukashenko send Belarusian troops into Ukraine or other forms of overt involvement in the war. Nor is Moscow pushing for the creation of supranational bodies within the Union State of Russia and Belarus as it had proposed before 2020.
The current model of relations with Russia suits the Belarusian regime just fine. In any case, there is no chance of a better alternative for the foreseeable future. That reality has under-appreciated implications for the strategic environment in Central Europe and the Baltics: if Moscow again wants to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for aggression or escalation, Lukashenko or any potential successor will have little choice but to play a supporting role. Whether senior figures in Minsk understand that is not entirely clear. If past is prologue, it is quite likely that the Belarusian leadership will pin their hopes on the possibility that they can somehow negotiate the right to avoid direct involvement in a new war unleashed by Moscow, perhaps by pointing to their supportive role in Ukraine at a make-or-break moment for the Putin regime in early 2022.
(Im)plausible Deniability
The circumstances under which a future act of Russian aggression is launched will matter a great deal, of course. It is not hard to imagine that the Kremlin will fall back on tried and tested tactics: for example, it may insist yet again that Russian actions are a reaction to a request from vulnerable population groups or countries that look to Moscow for protection.
Putin has used this ploy in Georgia and Ukraine to justify his actions. Perhaps that is because of his legalism or because he wants to avoid looking like an aggressor in the eyes of his supporters. Either way, Putin likely would strive for any escalation to be preceded by an alleged request from those on the ground. This was the purported basis for the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the formal annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Such excuses were entirely unconvincing, of course, but they were nonetheless important for the Kremlin to create the appearance that local residents or elites had asked for help.
Moscow has applied the same logic when making less fateful decisions concerning Russia and Belarus. Officially, it was Lukashenko who invited Russian troops to take part in joint exercises in early 2022, which set the stage for their participation in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In fall 2022, he asked Putin to deploy a “regional group” of troops to Belarus, which in practice became a cover for the training of mobilized Russians and a diversionary maneuver during the Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv and Kherson. According to the official version, it was Lukashenko who personally invited the remaining Wagner mercenaries to Belarus and requested the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons and Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
There is some value in this form of political theater, of course. Moscow is happy to portray Minsk as the initiator of such important decisions lest it humiliate Russia’s sole ally or appear to use the territory of Belarus without permission. Some of Putin’s domestic audience, and perhaps even some foreign audiences sympathetic to Moscow, also find it palatable to play along with this charade.
The status of Belarus as a separate sovereign state also provides the Kremlin with the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability when pursuing acts of aggression. Even if no one on the receiving end of such aggression will ever be convinced, to Putin’s loyal audience at home and abroad, such claims may look quite plausible.
Pathways Toward Escalation
It goes without saying that pondering possible scenarios for a new military crisis in Eastern Europe is an exercise in speculation. Even if the likelihood of such a turn of events is fairly low at the moment, the thought exercise itself can be useful. What are the possible ways in which Belarus might be sucked into momentous events, and how might outside players act in the coming months and years to reduce the associated risks?
Belarus’s geographical location is the key consideration. It provides Russia with two possible directions from which to act aggressively: either against Ukraine from the north or against NATO’s eastern flank (Poland, Lithuania, or Latvia). A new wave of belligerence toward either adversary would almost certainly require the successful reconstitution of Russian conventional forces that have been shredded on the battlefield during the current war. It also goes without saying that the Belarusian army simply lacks the manpower, experience, and weapons to break through its neighbors’ defenses on its own or to sustain itself for any length of time.
In the event that the Kremlin decides to launch a third phase of the war against Ukraine at some point in the future, it is hardly a given that it will follow the same playbook as in 2022. Back then, the Russian military deployed a large contingent to Belarus on the pretext of training exercises. Such a maneuver cannot be completely ruled out next time, of course, but any large-scale movement of Russian troops to Belarus would immediately attract the attention of NATO. The Zapad 2025 large-scale joint military exercise scheduled to take place in Belarus in September 2025 will be one of the most immediate tests of nerves and vigilance for NATO’s eastern members—and for the alliance as a whole. While military experts doubt Russia’s ability to divert sufficient manpower and equipment from the Ukrainian front to pose a credible threat of a new large-scale attack from Belarus (assuming no ceasefire is reached by then), the West will in any case closely monitor the size of the Russian deployment in Belarus in order to be prepared for any contingency.
It is an open question whether NATO countries would be in a position to send significant military reinforcements to frontline countries quickly or perhaps even to Ukraine itself. In April 2021, when Russian troops massed along the border with Ukraine, and in January 2022, when they gathered in Belarus, U.S. and European policymakers sought to minimize the risk of provoking a direct military confrontation with Moscow. The next time around, the escalation risks will be far more challenging to manage.
In the short term, there is also a risk that Russia could push Belarus directly into the current Ukraine war. That would be much less risky than provoking a direct clash with NATO. For example, Russia might deploy aircraft and missile systems to Belarus that were withdrawn in 2023–24 and use them to attack Ukraine once again from Belarusian military bases and airfields. (All such attacks ceased in fall 2022.) For its part, Kyiv has greatly enhanced its long-range strike systems over the past three years. It now has long-range missile and attack drone capabilities that could be used to hit Belarusian military facilities that would be legitimate targets and presumably far more vulnerable than targets inside Russia, which has extensive air defenses.
In the event of any large-scale or sustained attack launched from Belarus, the temptation for the Ukrainian leadership to eliminate that threat may prove stronger than its current preference to keep Belarus out of the war. In turn, any Ukrainian retaliatory strikes against Belarus could stir Kremlin demands that Lukashenko use his armed forces to retaliate.
Another potential pathway for escalation derives from the Lukashenko regime’s frequent use of migrants to stage clashes along the border with Poland or the Baltics. Since 2021, Minsk has been deliberately sending migrants from Asian and African countries through the Belarusian border into the European Union as a form of retaliation against EU sanctions. Lukashenko has stated many times that so long as sanctions remain in force, Belarusian border guards will not stop the migrants. The pace of illegal crossings varies depending on the season, but appears to be directly controlled by Minsk. At its peak, several thousand attempts to break through were recorded on a monthly basis.
In late 2021, a number of airlines from migrants’ countries of origin canceled flights to Minsk due to pressure from the EU. At that point, many migrants began to travel to the Belarusian border with the EU via Russia. Russia has staged similar actions along its borders with Finland and Norway in recent years, which suggests that Russian intelligence services are involved in the coordination of this long-term operation.
Starting from the initial months of the crisis in summer 2021, law enforcement agencies in Poland and other neighboring countries have been recording incidents of Belarusian security forces transporting migrants to the border, supplying them with tools for dismantling border fences, and rocks and slingshots for attacking EU border guards. In May 2024, a Polish soldier was killed in one of these clashes, after which Minsk swiftly reduced the flow of migrants for several months.
It is conceivable that border clashes could be deliberately provoked to trigger a military conflict. For example, a group of migrants could be given more dangerous weapons than slingshots. Alternatively, Belarusian mercenaries or security forces pretending to be migrants could try to cross the border. Any use of lethal force by the Polish, Lithuanian, or Latvian military could eventually lead to clashes with Belarusian border guards. This sort of escalation would create a formal pretext for Russia to accuse NATO countries of aggression and justify the involvement of the Russian military in defending the common border of the Union State.
At the same time, Moscow might not inform Minsk of its plans in advance. Knowing that the Belarusian leadership does not want to get proactively involved in a war, the Kremlin could create a situation in which Lukashenko would have little choice but to ask Moscow for help.
Risk Management
As described above, the risks of Belarus becoming more directly embroiled in the Russia-NATO standoff are hardly far-fetched. That increases the burden on NATO and EU frontline countries to determine if their deterrence and defense capabilities are indeed strong enough to persuade the Kremlin to avoid the temptation of such escalation. Frontline countries already feel considerable pressure to increase military spending, expand the size of their militaries, expand conscription and other forms of civil defense training, boost investment in their defense industrial base, beef up multinational deployments, and accelerate construction of fortifications and minefields along their borders with Belarus and Russia.
Such steps are undoubtedly part of a comprehensive defense strategy. But they are mainly intended to deter or contain Russia and treat the Belarusian factor as a secondary consideration, at best. Put another way, the question for defense planners and strategists to ponder is whether it is a mistake to treat Belarus as little more than a tool for the Kremlin with no ability to act on its own.
Of course, Lukashenko himself has done a lot to cement that perception. But the idea that Belarus’s leaders have completely surrendered to following the dictates of the Kremlin is an oversimplification of reality. It is worth thinking now about ways to influence Minsk in advance of any confrontation. Indeed, Minsk’s actions at a critical moment could either exacerbate a crisis or put unexpected obstacles in the way of Moscow’s plans.
Although the Belarusian regime is rightly considered a satellite of Russia, there are still aspects of state policy where the countries might part ways because their interests do not align 100 percent. The most obvious example is that Minsk’s interests clearly are not served by getting involved in a war with NATO or by encouraging the expansion of the Russia-Ukraine war into Belarusian territory.
Part of that is a reflection of basic political realities inside Belarus. Despite the enormous pressure imposed on Belarusian society since the falsified presidential elections in summer 2020, all post-February 2022 polling shows that an absolute majority of Belarusians are against their country taking part in the war. Just 3–10 percent of respondents support the idea of sending Belarusian soldiers to the Ukrainian front. Both Putin and Lukashenko are forced to take such facts into account when assessing the domestic political risks of ill-considered decisions. Even an authoritarian regime will not find it easy to get involved in a war of which society categorically wants no part.
It is also worth asking how to encourage trendlines whereby Minsk might drag its feet in dealings with the Kremlin or duck Russian efforts to suborn it into deeper participation in the Ukraine war or provocations against NATO countries. Such scenarios would, of course, serve the interests of regional security and, by extension, help deter or contain Russia. Given the very real possibility that the West will have less lead time in preparing for future Russian adventurism than it did in late 2021–early 2022, it is important to think now about possible incentives that might encourage Belarusian leaders to demonstrate their independence when the critical moment arrives.
First is the difficult question of whether to establish new channels of communication with Minsk, including with representatives of the military leadership. Trust on both sides is practically non-existent, but such channels could potentially establish a tool for discussions with the Belarusian side about any planned provocations or escalation. Despite appearances, the state apparatus in Minsk does not consist exclusively of pro-Russian hawks eager to drag their country into the Kremlin’s military adventures. At the same time, care must be taken to ensure that any engagement with the regime is not misread as a step toward re-normalization of relations without due concessions from Minsk.
Second, existing diplomatic channels can be used to explain to Belarus the potential military consequences of its full-fledged entry into a war against NATO or Ukraine. The more clearly the Belarusian authorities hear the message that such action could lead to the destruction of their regime, along with key military facilities, critical infrastructure, and Russian military forces and installations on Belarussian soil, the greater the chances that Minsk will resist such a scenario.
The presence of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—which is widely assumed but has not been publicly confirmed by official U.S. or NATO sources—would, if anything, increase the risks for Belarus in the event of a full-fledged military conflict between Russia and NATO countries. Even the theoretical possibility that Belarusian and Russian weapons stationed in Belarus—such as nuclear-capable aircraft and land-based launchers like the Iskander—could be used for strikes against NATO countries constitutes an important source of threat that would likely be targeted by the alliance in the early stages of any military confrontation.
Lukashenko’s public positioning on the role of nuclear weapons is not reassuring. Indeed, he has tried to mimic Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling, and it is not entirely clear whether he understands that hosting Russian nuclear warheads on Belarussian territory has actually created a destabilizing element in the military balance vis-à-vis NATO. Low-key conversations with Minsk could help clarify the state of Belarussian thinking about nuclear weapons and disabuse the Lukashenko regime of the notion that it has somehow put NATO military planners on the backfoot.
At the same time, there is no clear benefit for regional security of trying to sway Minsk by threatening to impose tougher sanctions. Neither the warnings from the United States and other Western countries before February 2022, nor the actual imposition of strong sectoral sanctions against Belarus immediately after the invasion, prevented Lukashenko from facilitating Russia’s aggression. Additionally, sanctions-related leverage was clearly stronger then than it is now, when the West has more or less exhausted its potential to apply economic pressure against Minsk.
A complete trade blockade on the western border of Belarus, including transit through its territory, would of course be painful for Lukashenko. But in recent years, Minsk has largely reoriented exports and logistics chains to Russia, so this threat is no longer so potent—especially when weighed against the military demands of its main ally, Moscow.
For the same reason, it is difficult to expect third parties—such as China—to have any real influence over Minsk’s decisionmaking at a critical moment. While China would not like to see any disruption of its only railway transit corridor to Europe (which runs through Belarus), the route accounts for less than 10 percent of Chinese exports to the EU. That share is clearly insufficient for Beijing to exert its full political leverage over the Belarusian authorities—leverage which, even in the best-case scenario, would likely fall short of offsetting Russia’s pressure on such a fundamental issue as a new war.
Third, it is important to start thinking creatively about ways that Belarus could contribute to regional stability if de-escalation and confidence-building measures become an actual possibility once the war winds down. While it is unlikely that we will see a return to conventional arms control any time soon, what happens on Belarusian territory will continue to have reverberations for neighboring states.
Would Belarus entertain possible restrictions on the deployment of foreign troops, nuclear weapons, long-range weapons, and military bases on its territory? That seems rather unlikely, but it may eventually become possible to address questions about the scale and regularity of military exercises and the creation of new mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of agreements on a reciprocal basis. Of course, Moscow has little or no interest in making frontline countries feel more secure, and it will have the last word on whether any such discussions are productive. At the same time, it is possible that such discussions could help expand Minsk’s room for maneuver over time and provide it with arguments in favor of resisting the Kremlin’s attempts to use Belarusian territory in ways that are corrosive to regional stability.
Fourth, there is continued value in supporting independent Belarusian media. Even today, such media outlets help keep public opinion from coalescing on a more militaristic footing or drifting toward greater solidarity with Russia. Even amid pervasive state censorship and attempts to intimidate citizens who try to access independent outlets via social media, audience numbers remain impressive. According to a Chatham House poll from December 2024, up to 40 percent of urban Belarusians with internet access continue to consume content from independent media in exile once a week or more often.
During periods of increased interest in news, such as Russia’s partial mobilization in 2022 or the Prigozhin mutiny in 2023, these media outlets report a several-fold surge in audience size. Much like in Soviet times with Western radio stations, even Belarusians who don’t normally follow these outlets know that, in a critical moment, this is the only place where they can find out what is actually going on. Independent media are also an important tool for counteracting Kremlin propaganda. In the wake of the dismantlement of the U.S. foreign assistance apparatus, there is a growing threat to the survival of Belarusian independent media. That outcome will only make it easier for Moscow to draw Minsk into a war.
Conclusion
Even if all the above steps are implemented by Western governments, there is no guarantee that Russia will not suborn Belarus into its future military adventures and provocations. Nor is it realistic to view Belarus as the weak link in any such efforts. There can be no substitute for massive European investment in military capabilities, defense industrial base revitalization, and border fortifications, among other priorities.
At the same time, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that Minsk still has its own interests and that Minsk’s views will continue to differ from the Kremlin’s. If the West fails to take that into consideration, it will miss the chance to create additional obstacles for Moscow. And the more such obstacles are put in place, the more difficult it will be for Moscow to be over-confident about the possible results of future aggression and provocation.