Belarus Ratchets Up Tension on Ukrainian Border a Couple More Notches

Two senior Belarusian military commanders issued statements on Friday, June 29 through the Russian state news agency TASS, that accused Ukraine of increasing "tension" on its borders.

Vadim Lukashevich, a senior member of the Belarusian Special Operations Command said, “We have received reports of Ukraine amassing troops, weapons and military equipment along our border… US-made infantry fighting vehicles, HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and the US M777 155mm howitzer have been deployed to the Zhytomyr Region.”

The Belarusian Air Force said there had been a marked increase in flights of Ukrainian drones in recent weeks.

Colonel Andrey Severinchik, Chief of the Belarusian Air Defense Missile Forces said, “We have lately been registering a sharp increase in flights of unmanned aerial vehicles conducting reconnaissance in border areas of the Republic of Belarus. The situation in the airspace is tense. The state border in our airspace is being violated constantly.”

The Chief of the Belarus General Staff, Pavel Muraveiko said that the situation on the border with Ukraine “is changing every day, and not for the better.” He said that Ukraine was carrying out “unjustified and so far, unexplained” activity which included the deployment of special forces to the city of Ovruch, Zhytomyr region.

In response, Andrii Kovalenko the Head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation said that Belarus was using disinformation at the Kremlin’s behest to stir up tension and to force Ukraine to move troops away from other areas of the front line.

This may be because the other recent efforts by Minsk and Moscow to elicit a response have not been met with the overreaction from Kyiv they may have hoped for.

In January the spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate Andrii Yusov, said, “[President Vladimir] Putin uses the Belarusian factor to distract Ukrainian forces, reserves, to create some additional points of tension. However, in directly involving the Belarusian army in ground operations for his aggressive annexationist war against Ukraine, he did not succeed.”

Belarus and Russia carried out a two phased exercise of tactical nuclear delivery systems held on Belarusian territory in early May and the second week of June. This likely had two main intensions.

Firstly, it was to remind the West that Russia was a nuclear power as the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov said that the nuclear drills ordered had been ordered by Putin in response to what he called “provocative statements and threats by certain Western officials against the Russian Federation.”

Secondly it may well have been an attempt to get Kyiv to focus on their neighbor while Moscow ramped up its offensive on the Kharkiv and Donetsk sectors. That is also why last week Belarus deployed a division’s worth of its Polonez multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) close to the border with Ukraine, the commander of which said, “The division entered the designated area with full ammunition and took up combat duty at designated targets. I am ready to carry out tasks of delivering missile strikes at a range of up to 300 km within 20 minutes.”

On Friday the State Border Committee of Belarus reported that the pro-Kyiv “Russian Volunteer Corps,” which fights against Russia was conducting reconnaissance of border areas supported by Ukrainian drones which Minsk’s border guards said forced them to deploy standard weapons and electronic warfare (EW) equipment.

It claimed that a detachment from the Mozyr border outpost  said it had brought down a Ukrainian quadcopter using a jammer in the Elsky district of the Gomel region on Wednesday, June 26. It said that video files recovered from the UAV showed it had been to carry out reconnaissance of infrastructure and industrial facilities along the border.

An April report by the Moscow Times said that Belarus had updated its military doctrine, to allow its armed forces to take part in hostilities in support of Russia and other “friendly” states. Recent comments from Minsk say the war in Ukraine as “a military conflict provoked by the collective West,” and specifically mentioning Poland and other NATO countries.

The fact Russia launched a large part of its February 2022 full-scale invasion from Belarus including, according to the former commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, allowing ballistic missiles to launched from its territory, which the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has admitted.

With that background and the continuing aggressive posture Belarus has taken, albeit under pressure from Moscow, it is hard to see how Minsk justifies its accusation that it is Ukraine that is responsible for tension at the border.