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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Moscow is trying to portray Minsk as being "increasingly complicit" in the war in Ukraine, by parking fighter jets and a nuclear-capable missile at a Belarusian airfield, British defense officials have said.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's grip on power is dependent on Vladimir Putin and the role Minsk might play in Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been the subject of conjecture.
Russia sent thousands of troops to Belarus, which was used as a launching pad for Putin's invasion and Lukashenko has spoken of a joint Russian-Belarusian force, although the effectiveness of such a grouping has been questioned by some experts.
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However, Britain's Ministry of Defense (MOD) has suggested that Russia is depicting Belarus as playing a greater role in the war.
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It said on Tuesday that two MiG-31K Foxhound jets "were almost certainly parked" at the Machulishchy Airfield in the Minsk region on 17 October and that nearby was a canister stored within a protective earth barrier.
"It is likely that the canister is associated with the AS-24 Killjoy air launched ballistic missile," defense officials said, referring to the weapon, also known as the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, which was one of six strategic missiles Putin described as "invincible" when he unveiled them in 2018.
"Russia has occasionally launched these weapons during the Ukraine war, but stocks are likely very limited," defense officials said, noting that Moscow "continues to expend its advanced long-range munitions against targets of limited operational importance."
Based in Belarus, the missile's 1,200-mile range "gives Russia little added advantage in terms of striking additional targets within Ukraine," the MOD said. It added that its deployment was probably a "message to the West and to portray Belarus as increasingly complicit in the war."
Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for a response to the British daily assessment which emphasizes Moscow's losses and Kyiv's gains in the war.
In October, the British Ministry of Defense dismissed the prospect of a Russian-Belarusian force, saying that Lukashenko's military probably does not have the ability to undertake complex operations.
Military analyst, Michael Kofman, who is director of Russia Studies at CNA (Center for Naval Analyses) told The Russia Contingency podcast, a spinoff of the War on the Rocks podcast, that Belarusian military forces "don't add up to a whole lot in terms of offensive combat potential."
"While I'm skeptical still of the prospects of a Russian attack from Belarus (that) doesn't mean they won't try," he said
"It's also possible that we're…looking in the wrong place because we're thinking about Kyiv, the capital—and the Ukrainian vulnerability may not be the capital at all," he said.
"The greater vulnerability may be something like the main nuclear power plant further up north that is not too far from the border which actually supplies a lot of electricity to the country."
The Rivne nuclear power plant is one of four in Ukraine and is the closest to its northern border with Belarus.
On October 27, the International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi said he would send inspectors to Ukraine's power plants, as concerns grow over the prospect that Russian troops could weaponize such facilities.
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