Putin's Belarus ambitions

 ISW:

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International journalists reportedly obtained the Kremlin’s classified 2021 strategy document on restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus through the Union State by 2030. The Kyiv Independent, Yahoo News, and several of their international media partners published an investigative report on February 20 about a classified 17-page Russian strategy document on how the Kremlin seeks to absorb the Belarusian state using the Kremlin-dominated Union State structure by 2030.[16] The journalists did not publish the strategy document to avoid compromising sources they said. While ISW is unable to confirm the existence or contents of this document, the reporters’ findings about the strategy document and its various lines of effort for Belarus’ phased military, political, economic, and cultural integration with Russia through the Union State are consistent with ISW’s long-term research and assessments about the Kremlin’s campaigns and strategic objective to subsume Belarus via the Union State.[17]

NATO must seriously plan for the likely future reality of a Russian-controlled Belarus. As ISW previously assessed, Putin will very likely secure significant gains in restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus regardless of the outcome of his invasion of Ukraine.[18] Russia’s likely permanent gains in Belarus present the West with a decision about how to deal with the potential future security landscape on NATO’s eastern flank. If the West allows Putin to maintain his current gains in Ukraine—particularly Crimea and eastern Kherson Oblast—then the Kremlin will be able to use both occupied Belarusian and Ukrainian territory to further threaten Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank. The West could alternatively set conditions for a future in which a territorially-whole Ukraine becomes a robust military partner in defending NATO’s eastern flank against Russia and Russian-occupied Belarus. This preferable long-term future is predicated on immediate and sustained decisive Western action to empower Ukraine to expel Russian forces from its territory. It is extraordinal unlikely that the West will be able to defeat or respond effectively to the Russian campaign to absorb Belarus without first defeating the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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This is consistent with my theory that it is Putin's ambition to restore the Russian empire including all of the former Soviet Union.  This makes it all the more important that former Soviet states support NATO's operations against the Russian war in Ukraine.  It also suggests that Finland and Sweden should be added to NATO.  

The war in Ukraine has exposed the weakness of the Russian military, but it has also revealed the long-term ambitions of Putin.  

I get the impression that the people of Belarus are no more interested in being a part of Russia than the people of Ukraine.  The dictator of Belarus does appear to be something of a Putin puppet.

See, also:

Treasury deputy: Russia sanctions are degrading its military

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Russia is the world’s second-largest arms producer after the United States, but Adeyemo asserted that “today, Russia can’t produce enough arms to meet their basic needs and to be a supplier to the countries that rely on them.”

The financial penalties imposed by the U.S. and its allies “have degraded Russia’s ability to replace more than 9,000 pieces of military equipment lost since the start of the war,” he said, adding, “Russia has also lost up to 50% of its tanks.”
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And:

 Opinion: How long will Russians tolerate Putin's costly war?

How much punishment will the Russians take?

Close to a thousand Russian soldiers are dying every day in Ukraine. Victory is nowhere in sight, and tens of thousands — or possibly even hundreds of thousands — more will die before the war ends.

The economy is sputtering, living standards are progressively declining, young professionals have either left in droves or are planning to do so, and every passing day reduces Russia’s prospects of modernization and development.
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Putin is a callous dictator willing to send troops into a meat grinder and punish anyone who disagrees with him.

And:

 Putin's Ukraine gamble seen as biggest threat to his rule

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Despite armed interventions in Chechnya, Syria and Georgia, Putin overestimated his military and underestimated Ukrainian resistance and Western support. Russian media try to boost his authority with images of a bare-chested Putin riding a horse, shooting at a military firing range and dressing down government officials on TV, but the war has exposed his shortcomings and the weakness of his military, intelligence services and some economic sectors.

Ukrainian forces have liberated more than half the territory Russia seized. The war has killed tens of thousands on both sides, caused widespread destruction, and induced not only Ukraine but Sweden and Finland to seek NATO membership. It has increased the security threat to Russia and scuttled decades of Russia's integration with the West, bringing international isolation.
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And:

 Russian troops killed deploying devastating rockets in Valentine's Day massacre

And:

Ukraine: The Latest podcast - How Russia lost 2000 troops in a weekend and only advanced 200 yards