The first Russian soldiers of the new joint military group created by Moscow and Minsk began to arrive in Belarus on Saturday. This disembarkation occurs just five days after the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, announced his formation with aggressive and victimizing rhetoric that has made the European Union fear that Belarus, the Kremlin's main ally, is going to get involved in the conflict. ukrainian
“The first trains of Russian soldiers that make up the regional military grouping have arrived in Belarus,” the Belarusian Defense Ministry stated. The statement was accompanied by images of military trains and trucks, as well as Russian soldiers greeted by women in traditional dress offering them bread and salt, a symbol of Slavic hospitality.
The Belarusian leader said on Monday that he had agreed to create this group with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new unit, he declared, is destined to defend his country's borders against a possible Ukrainian attack, an accusation that the Belarusian government has repeated several times in recent weeks.
Lukashenko assured that he had transmitted a message to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he threatened him not to put "his dirty paws on a single meter of Belarusian territory."
Kyiv, for its part, denied that there is any truth to these accusations. "We categorically reject the insinuations of the Belarusian regime," said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, who did not exclude that it is "a plan by the Russian Federation to carry out a provocation and further accuse Ukraine."
Lukashenko extended the accusation of preparing "terrorist" attacks and an "uprising" in Belarus to its neighbors Poland and Lithuania, both members of both the European Union and NATO. And he assured that the West would be pushing Kyiv to open a front against Belarus.
The Belarusian Defense Ministry did not offer any information on the number of Russian soldiers that had been incorporated, where they were going to be deployed and how many men in total the new unit will consist of. Asked on Friday about the size of the new force, Lukashenko limited himself to saying that the "base" of the contingent will be the Belarusian army and its "about 70,000 people."
“It is only necessary to ask Russia now for 10,000 or 15,000 people, since they have other problems there that you already know about,” he told Russian television.
Belarus assures that this formation will be solely defensive and its objective is to secure its western border. But the language used by the Minsk dictator and the fact that in February Russia used its territory to start entering Ukraine from the north does not offer any confidence to the Kyiv government, which accuses Minsk of complicity in the Russian military campaign.
On Tuesday Zelensky accused Moscow of wanting to "drag Belarus into the war" and asked the G-7 for an international observation mission to the Ukraine-Belarus border. Lukashenko has repeatedly denied that he is going to take that step. The last time, last Friday, in an interview on US television NBC. In Ukraine “we have not killed anyone and we do not plan to do so. No one has asked us to participate in this operation. (...) In addition, we offer shelter to refugees who come from Ukraine”, he assured.
