February 26 (Portal) – Belarus, a small Russian ally on the border with Ukraine, has up to 1.5 million potential military personnel outside its armed forces, a senior official was quoted as saying on Saturday.
President Alexander Lukashenko has supported his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in his years-long war with Ukraine, including by allowing him to invade from Belarusian territory and allowing Russia to train newly mobilized troops in Belarus.
Lukashenko this month ordered the formation of a new voluntary territorial defense force of up to 150,000 people. He said his army would only fight if Belarus was attacked.
“The structures of the organizations, not the armed forces, will amount to up to 1.5 million people in the event of the imposition of martial law and the transition of the economy to war mode,” State Secretary of the Security Council Alexander Volfovich said, according to the state news agency BelTA.
last update
Watch 2 more stories
Belarus has around 9.3 million inhabitants. The country’s professional army has about 48,000 soldiers and about 12,000 state border troops, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance.
Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Adaptation by William Mallard
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.