Alyaksandr Lukashenka is ready to go to war, or so he says.
In a three-and-a-half hour address to the nation last week, the autocratic Belarusian leader declared, “If our country faces an aggression, there will be hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers here, who will defend this sacred land together with hundreds of thousands of Belarusians.”
Lukashenka spoke as Russian troops continued to pour into Belarus, with many taking up positions along the country’s 1000km southern border with Ukraine.
Speaking at the United Nations Security Council on January 31, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted that Russia has already moved nearly 5,000 troops into Belarus together with short-range ballistic missiles, special forces, and anti-aircraft batteries. “We’ve seen evidence that Russia intends to expand that presence to more than 30,000 troops near the Belarus-Ukraine border, less than two hours north of Kyiv, by early February,” she said.
With the Russian military presence in Belarus expanding rapidly, the US State Department has ordered the family members of diplomats and employees at the Embassy in Minsk to leave the country. The State Department also warned American citizens against traveling to Belarus, citing the “unusual and concerning Russian military buildup.”
The change in Belarus’s geopolitical status over the past 18 months represents one of the most dramatic shifts in the security calculus in Eastern Europe since Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea, and perhaps since the end of the Cold War.
The changed security equation is highlighted by Russia’s current brinkmanship on the Ukrainian border, giving Moscow the ability to encircle and attack Ukraine from the north, east, and south. It also means the Russian military is now poised on the Belarusian border with Ukraine less than two hours away from Kyiv.