Nuclear-free Belarus: is it in danger?

When Belarus gained independence, it declared its intention to make the territory of the country nuclear-free. Belarus transferred all of its nuclear weapons to Russia, completing the process by November 1996. Russia, UK and USA offered their security assurances as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (with France and China offering similar guarantees) as part of an effort to convince Belarus (and Ukraine and Kazakhstan) to sign the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states. Since then, Belarus signed several important agreements, including the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It also began advocating for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe. However, it stopped short of ratifying its Additional Protocol, which would grant the IAEA additional authority to verify that a state is complying with its obligations on the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities. Also, Belarus has not signed or ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). At the end of 2021 official Minsk and Moscow made numerous critical statements concerning the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus. While for now, these threats are used as geopolitical blackmail to rebalance the status-quo, in the future they may turn into a real military confrontation with the West. The announced constitutional “referendum” may abolish the ‘nuclear-free’ status of Belarus by allowing the stationing of Russian nuclear forces on its territory. 

How to evaluate these provocative statements and intentions of the Belarusian and Russian officials regarding nuclear weapons in Belarus? Why does Lukashenka accept and promote pro-nuclear rhetoric in the country that experienced in full the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster? How should the international community react towards such rhetoric, and what else should be done to dissuade Belarus from changing its nuclear-free status? These and other questions will be discussed at the expert webinar jointly convened by the Research Centre of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya Office (OST Research Centre) and the Oxford Belarus Observatory (OBO), with the support of the GCRF COMPASS project.