By Mark Trevelyan and Felix Light
(Portal) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine’s counteroffensive had “failed” as he received Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, his close ally, for talks in St Petersburg on Sunday.
“There is no counter-offensive,” Russian news agencies quoted Lukashenko as saying.
Putin replied: “It exists, but it failed.”
Ukraine began its long-awaited counter-offensive last month but has made little progress against well-entrenched Russian forces that control more than a sixth of its territory after nearly 17 months of war.
US General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s push was “far from failure” and would be long, hard and bloody.
A Telegram channel linked to Lukashenko quoted him jokingly as saying that fighters from the Russian mercenary group Wagner, who are now training the Belarusian army, are interested in crossing the border into NATO member Poland.
“The Wagner boys have started charging us – they want to go west. ‘Let’s take a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszow,'” he was quoted as saying. There was no indication that Lukashenko was seriously considering this idea.
On Thursday, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said Wagner fighters had started training Belarusian special forces at a military compound a few miles from the Polish border.
Poland is moving additional troops towards the border with Belarus in response to the arrival of Wagner troops, who were transferred there after a short-lived mutiny in Russia last month.
In response, Putin warned Poland on Friday that any aggression against Belarus would be counted as an attack on Russia. He said Moscow will use all means at its disposal to respond to any hostility towards Minsk.
USEFUL PARTNER
Russia and Belarus are linked in a partnership called the “Union State,” in which Moscow is by far the dominant player. But Lukashenko has proven his usefulness to Putin since invading Ukraine in February 2022, allowing Russia to use his country as a launch pad early in the war.
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He then had Russian forces trained at his military bases, frequently conducting joint exercises and receiving tactical nuclear weapons that Putin had stationed in Belarus, a move widely condemned in the West.
The Kremlin also commended Lukashenko for brokering last month’s deal to end the Wagner mutiny, which Putin said briefly threatened to plunge Russia into civil war.
Putin said the two leaders would meet on Sunday and Monday and discuss security and other issues “at length and in depth.”
Lukashenko has not used his small army for action in Russia’s war, but the threat of a new attack from Belarusian soil is forcing Ukraine to protect its northern border and increase its forces while trying to step up its counteroffensive in the east and south of the country.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Felix Light; Editing by Hugh Lawson)