If Belarusian soldiers are involved that is a greater escalation that simply allowing Russia to invade another nation through their territory.
Belarus being a Russian pawn at the moment anything is possible I guess
Either way Belarus are defacto participants having done military drills, allowing tanks to move through their checkpoints into Russia.
Regardless of whether they are or are not shooting right now, Belarus is 100% a pawn of Russia.
That is the model Putin is trying to create in Ukraine.
Also, take the following with more than a grain of salt as I'm in no way really knowledgeable about such systems, but I would imagine both the area itself and temporarily disturbing it could be valuable as cover for nuclear weapons. One valuable tool for keeping track of them involves detecting and analyzing escaped isotope traces, and that's going to be harder to pick out and make sense of against that noisy background.
As I understand it, nuclear weaponry still features prominently in Russia's military doctrine and it's worth noting that not only the military but Russia's whole citizenry have been trained and prepared for nuclear fallout, to a much greater extent than most nations seem to prioritize today.
In addition to artillery I imagine for instance certain kinds of anti-air systems might be attractive to put on a site like that. Any further suggestions? They could have taken weeks to bring equipment in during the "military exercise" with Lukashenko's troops, so I guess few things are truly off the table.
You can't hide a nuclear blast, we have satellites in orbit that detect the flash. Chech the vela incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
"Russia's whole citizenry have been trained and prepared for nuclear fallout, to a much greater extent than most nations seem to prioritize today."
That's not been the case for like 40 years
In fact you probably could put a nuclear bomb inside a lead-lined shipping container and send it from China to US, across all US railways, and back across the world on another ship, and probably no-one would ever know.
Also why would Russia move nukes by land through chernobil, when they have bombers and complete control of the airspace?
Setup your artillery there and they can’t just shell the area back out of fear of causing a nuclear disaster.
IMO, the UN should have stepped in and taken control of the nuclear zone. There is a global risk here.