Belarus's exiled pro-democracy leader has warned that using her homeland for any attack on Ukraine would backfire on its dictator Alexander Lukashenko and the Kremlin, as Russia sent forces onto its neighbour's territory for war games.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said elements of the Belarusian political and military elite would not acquiesce to their nation being dragged into a conflict with Ukraine, and her compatriots would not want Russia to cast doubt on Belarus’s independence by keeping its forces in the country after this month’s drills.
Moscow sent about 100,000 troops and heavy weapons towards Ukraine in recent weeks, and fears are now growing that a powerful contingent that has been deployed to Belarus could be used to intimidate or even attack Kyiv – which is just 150km south of the Belarusian frontier.
The United States has warned of an "unusual and concerning Russian military build-up" near the Belarus-Ukraine border, and Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg says the drills scheduled to start next Thursday will involve 30,000 Russian soldiers, fighter jets, missiles and air-defence systems in Belarus, in what he called "the biggest Russian deployment there since the cold war".
“For sure, any attempt to involve Belarus’s army or land to threaten another country will not be agreed among the political elite or the military forces. And there is no support among Belarusian people for any actions like this,” Ms Tsikhanouskaya said on Friday.
“We don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain, but I think the Kremlin knows that Belarusians will not accept any kind of troops in Belarus [staying] behind after the drills,” she told The Irish Times.
“Belarusians are not ready to meet any military troops or Russian invasion with open arms. They will not accept any threat to our independence, and this would only create one more regional conflict, which wouldn’t be comfortable for the Kremlin.”
Massing troops
Russia has massed troops around northern, eastern and southern Ukraine while threatening to take "military-technical" measures if the US and Nato refuses to halt expansion of the alliance and do not withdraw its forces from member states in eastern Europe.
Washington says those demands are "non-starters" and is sending 2,700 more troops to Poland and Romania and putting another 8,500 on standby to respond to any security crisis in Europe – moves the Kremlin says inflame tension.
Russian president Vladimir Putin met Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday, and their countries said they both "oppose further enlargement of Nato and call on [it] to abandon its ideologised cold war approaches."
“The Chinese side is sympathetic to and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe,” they added, according to a joint statement released by the Kremlin.
Ms Tsikhanouskaya and western states believe she was the true winner of 2020 presidential elections that sparked huge protests against Mr Lukashenko, Belarus’s ruler since 1994, who responded with a brutal crackdown in which several people died, hundreds were hurt, tens of thousands detained and many dissidents fled; Ms Tsikhanouskaya and her children found safety in Lithuania.
Moscow supported Mr Lukashenko’s regime – which is now holding about 1,000 political prisoners – and his claim that the peaceful pro-democracy rallies were part of a western plan to violently oust him and turn Belarus against Russia.
Mr Lukashenko insists his regime is peaceful, but has claimed that neighbouring Poland and Lithuania are plotting to attack Belarus and that Ukraine is massing troops and “nationalist radicals” near their shared border.
“So will there be a war or not?” he said last week. “Yes, there will be, but only in two cases: if Belarus suffers direct aggression . . . or if our ally Russia suffers a direct attack.”
