The blindingly obvious subtext to this, especially in the context of how badly and visibly strategic infrastructure in Moscow got whacked yesterday, is “we can abso-fucking-lutely take what you think you can dish out, and still hand your ass to you on a platter, Luka-chan”. This may be seen by many as an escalation, but aiding and abetting Russia in coordinating attacks on civilian residential buildings was an escalation in the first place; this is actually just a proportionate response.
And guess whose army doesn’t have a shitload of active, current experience fighting this war, Luka-chan?
Agreed, and this is a good example of how people’s narrow focus on drones making other aspects of warfare obsolete makes it easy to miss a crucial aspect of this moment, armored manuever is not obsolete, rather russia is currently incapable of it given their doctrine, material exhaustion and lack of effective equipment or combined arms integration.
The reason the difference between “drones make armored manuever warfare with concentrations of heavy armor obsolete” and “russia is incapable of it right now” matters here is that even if Belarus really wants to enter the war russia doesn’t even have the skeleton of a tactical and strategic model that works against Ukraine to give them.
Yes… russian infilitration attacks are “successful” but only if you don’t include the effect of massive attrition on organizational decay, but also for political reasons when a nation enters a war in almost every case it is bound politically to make some kind of emphatic, powerful statement of action associated with the entrance into the war in order to signal to strength and unity to domestic and foreign audiences. Russia specifically only “succeeds” in their tactics when they stick to maximally dispersed infiltration tactics that fundamentally cannot create politically “punchy” enough moments to serve this capacity. Thus if Belarus enters the war they will do it in a mass concentrated armored push and it will get absolutely flattened by Ukraine.
I really only see Belarus entering the Ukraine as a realistic possibility if russia had managed to find a formula that works, but it is clear that they have not.