Is This Really the Best Time for Belarusian and Russian Nuclear Exercises?

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, May 21, 2026

 

Lublin, Poland — In March 2023, a bit more than one year after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping personally warned Vladimir Putin against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine during a face-to-face meeting in Moscow. At least, that was the word from Chinese and Western officials.

 

For what it’s worth, the Kremlin denied that the conversation happened. But at the summit, on March 22, 2023, Putin and Xi signed a joint statement that declared, among other things, “All nuclear-weapon states should refrain from deploying nuclear weapons abroad and should withdraw any nuclear weapons already deployed overseas.”

 

And then, four days later . . . Putin announced he was deploying tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus.

 

I mention this because at the start of the week, Belarus announced it was running nuclear test drills with those weapons that Putin put in that country:

 

The Belarusian Defense Ministry said the drills would test its readiness to deploy nuclear weapons in different areas of the country.

 

“During the training, in cooperation with the Russian side, it is planned to practice the delivery of nuclear munitions and their preparation for use,” the ministry said.

 

It added that the exercises would focus on “practicing stealth, movement over significant distances, and calculations for the use of ‌forces and equipment.”

 

Yes, this is only a drill. But the Belarusian government doesn’t just make a move like that on its own; this week, NATO watched its geopolitical rival to the east run large-scale nuclear exercises:

 

Russia launched its largest nuclear exercises in years on Tuesday, mobilizing nearly 65,000 troops, over 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 surface vessels and 13 submarines, including eight strategic nuclear submarines, in a three-day drill that runs through Thursday.

 

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the maneuvers without prior public notice on May 19, framing them as a rehearsal for “the preparation and use of nuclear forces in the event of a threat of aggression.” The exercises involve the Strategic Missile Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, Long-Range Aviation Command, and units from the Leningrad and Central Military Districts, according to the ministry statement. Live launches of ballistic and cruise missiles at ranges inside Russia are planned as part of the drills.

 

Perhaps coincidentally, this week, Putin and Xi met again.

 

If you think this newsletter’s topics can get pretty grim, you need to talk to Witold Rodkiewicz, a senior fellow at the Russia Department of Poland’s Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw-based, publicly funded but independently operating foreign-policy think tank. (Think of a foreign-policy focused Congressional Research Service.) Rodkiewicz makes me look like Little Mary Sunshine.

 

I began by asking Rodkiewicz what he thought of the narrative that something behind the scenes appears to be changing in Russia — the lack of military hardware at the victory parade, the three-day cease-fire, Putin’s comment regarding the war, “I think that the matter is coming to an end.”

 

“There’s a tendency in mainstream Western media and community, there is a demand for a specific type of news,” Rodkiewicz began. “People want to have a solution, a deus ex machina. They don’t want to deal with the problem, they are tired. They are looking with hope that the Russians are going to provide a solution.”

 

He continued, “The situation in Russia is slowly changing, but I think we are very far from a breaking point. I think the Russian ship of state, if you can call it that, or the Russian mafia system is still on the same course. There is still a fundamental belief that they are likely to win this, a total win. . . . They look at things through the ratio of global power, and they believe that the power ratio is shifting in their favor, in the favor of their camp, namely China.”

 

Earlier in the week, a high-level NATO official discussed the relationship between Xi and Putin and said, “Putin is the horse, and Xi is the rider” — meaning that Xi was the ultimate decision-maker. (The deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus would suggest that the horse can still defy the rider every now and then.)

 

Rodkiewicz said that characterizations of Putin as subservient were missing the point; a world where China is ascendant is a world where Putin’s territorial ambitions remain intact and he can largely enact his vision of a greater, more powerful Russia. (The Polish analyst is very skeptical of the notion that Russia and China will ever end up in a significant conflict over Siberia. Whatever China needs from that region in terms of natural resources, it can simply buy from Russia.)

 

“The Russians believe that China is the future,” Rodkiewicz said. “Russian elite used to look down on China, [but they have] learned to admire [the] Chinese elite, they think China is bound to win, they look at international relations in Darwinian terms, it’s a power struggle, to the death.”

 

He cited a little-noticed comment from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, about a month after the war started.

 

“We have come to understand that it’s not just about Ukraine, it is about an aggression against all things Russian, including Russia’s interests, religion, culture, language, security, and so on. And now, the West’s reaction to our actions, which is completely frenzied, I would say — please excuse the harsh words — shows that an actual life or death struggle is underway for Russia’s right to exist on the world map and fully ensure its legitimate interests.”

 

Lavrov’s statement is absolute nonsense used to excuse a terroristic war of aggression, but the West must deal with the fact that Lavrov, Putin, and Russian elites actually believe that absolute nonsense.

 

Despite the grim outlook on the worldview of Xi and Putin, Rodkiewicz pointed out that the West, and in particular the United States, have an unparalleled advantage in that its system of alliances give it friends — sometimes well-armed friends — all around the globe. He contended that autocracies like Russia or China rarely if ever have any true allies, just client states or satellite states that must be kept in line, or comparably powerful states where interests may be aligned, but the fellow regime can never truly be trusted.

 

Speaking of allies, one of this week’s newsletters noted that Poland has purchased $60 billion in U.S. weapons. I forgot to mention that the Poles have invested $500 million to expand and modernize U.S. military facilities on its territory, fully funding the upgrades. When U.S. forces are stationed in Poland, the Polish government covers more costs than Japan or Germany.

 

Here’s Vice President JD Vance at the White House yesterday, responding to a question from a Polish reporter about the last-minute cancellation of a rotation of 4,000 troops to Poland — a cancellation that the Polish government learned about from reading Army Times, not from the U.S. government itself:

 

“For my entire life, I have heard chirping from the European media about everything that’s wrong with the United States of America. We don’t have this, we don’t have that. We don’t spend enough on health care, even though one of the reasons we spend so much on defense was because we have tens of thousands of troops in Europe. I think that if the European media wants to attack the president of the United States, they need to start looking in the mirror. All he has said is we’re going to be good allies. We’re going to be good friends. We’re going to be trading partners. But it is reasonable for Europe to take a little bit more ownership over its continental integrity.”

 

Except . . . the Poles aren’t asking about spending on health care. They’re not criticizing American budgetary priorities. They, out of any country in Europe, have done more to “take ownership over its continental integrity.”

 

They’d just like to get a call when the Pentagon decides to cancel a major deployment to their soil, ya know?

 

*I know someone asked why I’m referring to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland as “NATO’s Eastern Flank” and leaving out Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, or Turkey. The short answer is that the embassies of the first five countries organized this reporting trip and are calling themselves “NATO’s Eastern Flank.”

 

ADDENDUM: I have not picked a quiet time to be here in Eastern Europe, as earlier this week, a Romanian NATO jet shot down a Ukrainian drone that had been driven off course by Russian electronic countermeasures; the drone crashed to the ground in Estonia.