Can Putin successfully drag Belarus into war with Ukraine?

Putin’s war in Ukraine is not going his way. As the screw tightens on him, what options does he have left up his sleeve? There remains, of course, the possibility that Putin could, at some point, choose to deploy nuclear weapons – he himself has threatened this enough times. But there is also Belarus. Controlled by Alexandr Lukashenko, currently in his sixth term as president thanks to an election in 2020 rigged in his favour with Putin’s help, the country has sat on the fringes of the war since it began.

On Monday, as Putin launched his latest attack on Ukraine, Belarus announced that, together with Russia, it was deploying a joint regional forces group to its borders in response to the ‘worsening situation’ in Ukraine. What the purpose of this joint group is remains to be seen, with little intel currently available on how many troops will be deployed, or what their true purpose is.