Vladimir Putin must be positively fuming. His Ukrainian invasion folly has gone off the rails at this point, with Twitter users not only roasting the Russian dictator for his military’s abject failures, but also sharing a plethora of footage of Moscow’s troops, captured, telling the entire world just how confused and unprepared they were.
Then, on top of that, the world itself is rallying behind Ukraine, (with the usual authoritarian suspects being the only outliers).
Perhaps the most embarrassing moments are yet to come for Putin, however, as he’s been forced to ask for help from neighboring Belarus.
Belarus could send troops into Ukraine to support the Russian invasion on Monday, a US official said.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the former Soviet Republic has been used as a launching pad for the unprovoked attack.
“It’s very clear Minsk is now an extension of the Kremlin,” the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post on Sunday.
And then, almost unthinkably.
Earlier in the day, a referendum in Belarus approved a new constitution ditching the country’s non-nuclear status, which could now see the country getting Russian weapons.
The new constitution could see nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil for the first time since the country gave them up when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The timing of that referendum appears to coincide with Putin’s recent adjustment to the readiness level of his nuclear forces.
