The Kremlin would try at all costs to draw its Belarusian ally into armed struggle against Ukraine.
By Eloi Passot
Published 2/24/2023 at 12:55 PM, updated 2/24/2023 at 1:54 PM
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Ukrainian soldiers at the Belarusian border, February 20, 2023. STAFF/ Portal
After accusing Russia of orchestrating an “invasion” in Transnistria, it’s Ukraine’s turn to accuse Moscow of provocation. According to Kiev, Russia is preparing to stage a Ukrainian attack on the Belarusian border. On its Telegram channel, the Northern Operational Command of Ukraine announced on Thursday that the Ukrainian secret service had observed Russian convoys heading towards the Chernihiv region. On board troops without Russian identification, but in uniforms similar to those of the Ukrainians. “It is likely that their aim is to accuse the Ukrainian defenders of violating the territorial integrity of Belarus because the soldiers wear uniforms similar to the uniforms of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” specifies the Ukrainian command.
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For the Institute for the Study of War, “Russia is trying to force the hand of Lukashenko or accuse Ukraine of prolonging the war in order to weaken the support Kiev enjoys.” According to many analysts, the Kremlin would indeed put pressure on Lukashenko to side with the Russians militarily. The Belarusian leader has so far refused to do so, but he said at a rare meeting with foreign media in Minsk last week that he was “ready to fight with the Russians from the territory of Belarus only in one case: albeit only one soldier arrives from there [de l’Ukraine, NDLR] with a gun on our territory to kill our people”. Alternatively, the Kremlin could try to mobilize as many Ukrainian soldiers as possible on the Belarusian border a year after the Russian invasion, “with the aim of improving Ukrainian defenses in eastern Ukraine weaken and prepare for “counter-offensives” led by Ukraine.
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So far, Belarus has served as a kind of rear base for the Russian army. Russian soldiers and equipment are still deployed there today. At the end of January, Vladimir Putin asked his government to negotiate with Belarus about the creation of joint military training centers. Belarus and Russia even announced the creation of a joint military force in mid-October, which Minsk says has a purely “defensive” mission. The two countries constantly conduct large-scale military exercises and regularly fuel Western fears that the Belarusian army could be fighting Ukraine.
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