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Belarus flexes military muscle on their border with Ukraine
Yesterday, Belarus announced that it had begun “military drills” on its southeastern border which it shares with Ukraine. Belarusian defense officials claim that the drills are to assess the readiness of its territorial troops.
According to a Telegram post by the Belarusian Defense Ministry, the drills are scheduled from the 12th to the 14th of this month and are designed to assess troop readiness in combat and to “work out the issues of building up and functioning the communications system.” They will take place due north of Kyiv in the Gomel region.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Belarus' dictator Alexander Lukashenko continues to search for grounds to join the war as Belarus conducts massive military drills. <br><br>But the question of whether this is all a spectacle for Putin or real preparation for an attack remains unanswered. <a href="https://t.co/hiMA9s2DC7">https://t.co/hiMA9s2DC7</a></p>— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) <a href="https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1546842654327160833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 12, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Belarus is also holding communication drills led by the Chief of Communications of the Armed Forces from the 11th to the 15th of this month.
Major General Oleg Myshchenko, Chief of the Communications Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, will oversee the “Tactical and special training with the communications forces.”
Volodymy Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said early last month that there was just a small chance of having to defend against a ground invasion by Belarus in conjunction with Russia’s assault, but that Kyiv was “preparing for all the risks of an invasion.”
By the end of that month however, Zelenskyy was accusing Putin of efforts to conscript Belarus — Russia’s only EU neighbor supporting his military actions — to fight along side Russia. This claim came after a dozen cruise missiles were launched from Russian planes flying over airspace owned by Belarus.
The Belarusian Defense Ministry claims that the military drills and training were planned previously, but did not specify when the plans were made or solidified. Still, the announcement comes a mere month after Belarus began “combat readiness training” and just weeks after Belarus allowed Russia to fire missiles into Ukrainian from inside their borders.
Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Minister of Defense said, “We have approximately 700,000 in the armed forces and when you add the national guard, police, border guard, we are around a million-strong.”
Ukrainian civilians have been urged to evacuate from the southern region in anticipation of an attack.
