Seriously? They already have nukes in belarus. They couldn't roll over fast enough.
They've had troops and equipment in Belarus since before the invasion.
No, I think this war has proven pretty conclusively that the Russians (and Putin in particular) aren't some mega genius villains and formidable opponents. They're just greedy thugs who thought they could roll in unopposed and claim some land. That's it. No 5D chess strategy at the beginning of this plan. Just bad supply lines, 1500+ destroyed tanks, sunk flagship of the fleet, stalled convoys with bad logistics, and indiscriminate massive artillery bombardment with old hardware. That's it. They never expected to be in this position now, and they're just playing it all by ear.
Occam's razor says this is just more of the same and not whatever "it's a feint", "but US bioweapons labs!", "we're holding back the best troops", "NATO troops are fighting in Ukraine", etc is the Kremlin talking point of the day.
Regarding nukes in Belarus, they're doing that because what else can they do? Actually stationing troops there would subtract away from their combat effectiveness, so better to station some token scary units and appeal to the domestic audience to be "strong".
They're just greedy thugs who thought they could roll in unopposed and claim some land
If Zelenskyy just respected the Minsk 2 agreement made by his predecessor, the russians and the french and gremans, then none of this would have happened and hundreds of thousands of people would not have died. Also if the Donbass shelling didn't increase significantly in early Feb and a massive increase in Ukraine troops on the fortified regions just outside of Donbass, preparing for an invasion, then this would not have happened.
It's Ukraine's fault.
But then Russia shouldn't have violated the Budapest agreement (whereby Ukraine gave up its nukes) by annexing Crimea and having anything to do with this mess or illegally sending "green men on vacation" into the war zone or shooting down passenger airplanes or propping up the separatist movement in Eastern Ukraine. Soros et al shouldn't have encouraged Euromaidan. etc etc etc
Point is I'm pretty sure we can find plenty of faults, broken promises, and war crimes galore on each side, but it never was about any of this shit anyway--that's just talking points (like US bringing democracy to Iraq) to cover the actions. None of that morally or legally excuses Russia invading a neighbor. Diplomatically nobody of significance takes Russia seriously on any of this--see UN votes for what they're worth lol. Even if you take what Russia says at face value about fighting Nazis (lmao), it's especially embarrassing for Russia to do this after 20 years of harping on the US for pulling the same kind of cavalier world police shit taking out "Bad Guys".
Turns out their criticisms of US foreign policy had nothing to do with legitimate objections; they were just jealous that the US could do that and get away with it. They inflated their own egos and importance and thought they are a great power that could too. Well now they're getting their try at it. They should have been smart and learned from the US's mistakes of foreign expeditions, but now they're going to experience the joys of fighting an insurgency and an endless military industrial complex from economies literally more than 20x the size of theirs. Raytheon sales go brrrrr and DC alphabet boys live out their Cold War fantasies of killing Ivan (but from the comfort of a Zoom call as they tell the Ukrainians what the Russians are doing) as Russian tanks get destroyed and tens of thousands of soldiers killed. Stupid, stupid move.
So morally/legally/ethically this invasion is beyond flimsy, but more importantly in terms of military results and economics this is an absolute fiasco for Russia. And in the world of realpolitik, that's the only part of this that really matters.
It makes you wonder why suddenly last week, Russia cruise missiled Kyiv for the first time in a while and suddenly plans to station missiles (possibly nukes) in Belarus. Russia also bragged about destroying a facility with 50+ officers. Did their intelligence catch whiff of this earlier and the US media is doing pre-emptive damage control?