According to the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, Ukraine has deployed around 120,000 troops along the border with Belarus. The response was not long in coming, and on the morning of Sunday, August 18, President Alexander Lukashenko declared on the Rossiya TV channel that he had deployed almost a third of his armed forces along the entire border. It is difficult to estimate the number of soldiers, but according to the Military Balance 2022 published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cited by the Guardian, Belarusian professionals would be 48,000, so it could be at least 12,000-15,000 units. The Belarusian president, an ally of Vladimir Putin, said: “Seeing Kiev’s aggressive policy, we have repositioned our army at certain points along the entire border to be ready in case of war.” Dorsa Jabbari, correspondent in Moscow for Al Jazeera, reports that Lukashenko is “making very serious threats to Kiev officials,” effectively announcing that any Ukrainian encroachment into Minsk territory would trigger an offensive reaction. This raises some doubts about Russian and Ukrainian strategies. Although the attack on Russian territory on August 6 in the Kursk region could suggest a change of pace by Kiev, the opening of a second front would be unsustainable and would only have the effect of widening the conflict to the west but especially to the north, where Ukraine and Belarus are separated by the lake formed by the Dnepr River and where the distance of the border – the Chernobyl area – from the Ukrainian capital is only 120 kilometers as the crow flies. So it would not be convenient for Zelensky at all. Moreover, a small part of the lake, between two national parks, is in Belarusian territory, so a clash could easily lead to direct Russian aid by opening the way for Moscow’s troops to the town of Chernihiv and then to Kiev from the E95 highway. There is, however, another vision of the situation: Putin has not yet been able to use the strategic position of Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine, but it is clear that any skirmish would make this eventuality easier. Lukashchenko could in fact declare that he wants to defend himself from a Ukrainian advance, but the presence of Kiev’s troops on the border was organized precisely to prevent Russian soldiers, who have been present in Minsk territory since the beginning of the conflict, from entering from that side, a possibility created by the “friendship” between Putin and Lukashchenko. Officially, since March 2022, Moscow has deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus under a “sharing” agreement, also deploying 9K-720 Iskander missile systems, on which units from Minsk have also been trained. At the time of these events, the then leader of the Belarusian opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, declared that the missile initiative “contradicted the will of the people,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that it was a serious step towards internal destabilization of the country. Belarusian forces on the southern front can count on three military air force bases: Biaroza, where units equipped with drones are deployed; Luniniec, with air defense units and, further north, in Babruysk with aircraft and helicopters. The ground troops have a base in Brest, in the south-western part of the country, in an area too far from the “hottest” part of the border, where instead there are three large logistics centers for ammunition, in the towns of Prybor and Dobrus. The largest brigades have until now been based in the north, almost on the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, according to the scheme dating back to the Cold War. The same refoundation of the armed forces, headed by the President of the Republic, officially took place on March 20, 1992 with Soviet materials and doctrines
