After weeks out of the focus of the Ukrainian War, Belarus re-emerged on the scene this Wednesday (4) by starting surprise military exercises on its territory. The country is Russia’s main ally in the offensive against their neighbors.
The move comes on the 70th day of the Russian invasion, when Moscow expanded the forces involved in the attacks in the Donbass region (Russian-speaking east of the country) and announced that it had used a Black Sea Fleet submarine for the second time in bombardments with two Kalibr cruise missiles. .
Aleksandr Lukachenko’s dictatorship is an old friend of Moscow, but it has always sought to balance itself between the former Soviet metropolis and the European Union. That broke in 2020, when massive protests against yet another rigged re-election of the leader led him to seek support from Vladimir Putin.
It worked, the repression ended the most acute dissent, but the bill came. The Kremlin managed to unify its military doctrine with that of its neighbour, and in the months before the start of the war it was allowed to concentrate men and equipment there.
The result was the front that attacked Kiev at the very beginning of the conflict, descending directly from Belarus and with the support of anti-aircraft systems based in the country. None of Lukashenko’s soldiers, however, officially took part in the action.
The West was not very convinced and also included the country’s authorities on sanctions lists, but nothing like the progressive shutdown of the international system imposed on Russia. Since then, Belarus has pretended to be a luxury extra and has hosted some peace talks, although the withdrawal of the troops that failed to take the Ukrainian capital and their relocation to the east took place through its territory.
According to the Belarusian Defense Ministry, the maneuvers are only intended to “test your combat readiness” and pose no danger to neighbors. Kiev did not buy this at face value. “We are ready,” said the spokesman for the Ukrainian border service, Andrii Demchenko, about a possible reinforcement of Minsk to the Putin war.
On the one hand, he would be welcome, as there is a chronic anemia of human resources for Putin, who has not decreed a general mobilization to avoid calling the war by its name — he sticks to the formalism “special military operation”.
The Kremlin denied on Wednesday that Putin will use the most important date on the country’s political calendar, the day of victory over the Nazis in World War II on May 9, to declare war and national mobilization.
“This is nonsense, zero chance,” said spokesman Dmitri Peskov. Speculation is rampant in Russian military circles, dissatisfied with what they see as a limited-effort and unsuccessful war. The date had been cited by British authorities as well.
On the other hand, if Belarus enters the war, it will guarantee yet another region of instability on Russia’s borders. More than at any time since they were part of the extinct Soviet Union in 1991, the neighbor is now under Russian political control. Tougher Western sanctions and bloodshed could spoil the arrangement, with the resurgence of demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Kiev has pointed to a strengthening of Russian actions in Donbass, particularly around the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which has been hit hard by bombings. The Russian Defense Ministry did not confirm, preferring to focus on publicizing attacks on NATO (Western Military Alliance) arms supply lines to Ukraine.
According to the ministry, six train stations and power substations that fed the railway lines used by these convoys coming from the west – mainly on the Polish border – were destroyed. With the Battle of Donbass unfolding, the influx has changed: in addition to portable weapons against tanks, vital in the first phase of the war, there are now almost 90 American howitzers and perhaps 200 Polish tanks donated to Kiev.
In a videoconference, Minister Serguei Choigu said that “any NATO transport with weapons is a target”.
“The Russian military command is trying to increase the intensity of its offensive operation. And it seeks to destroy our transport system,” said Ukrainian defense spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianik. Ukrainian forces bombed downtown Donetsk, the capital of the eponymous Russian breakaway republic of the same name in Donbass.
In Mariupol, in the south of the country, there were Russian attacks on the two remaining battalions of nationalists from the neo-Nazi group Azov hiding in a steel mill in the city, but afterwards the Kremlin said Putin ordered them only to remain surrounded. The Azovstal power plant is the end point of the toughest Ukrainian resistance in the south-east of the country, a link between the Donbass and the Crimea annexed in 2014.
