Russian president Vladimir Putin plans to hold talks with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Monday amid growing concern that the Kremlin wants to use its neighbour’s territory to reopen a northern front against Ukraine and launch a new ground attack on Kyiv.
Heavy fighting continued in eastern Ukraine over the weekend as engineers restored electricity supplies to millions of people who were left without power when Russia fired dozens of missiles at power stations and other infrastructure on Friday.
Mr Putin, his defence chief Sergei Shoigu and other Russian ministers are expected in Minsk on Monday to meet their Belarusian counterparts, three days after Mr Putin gathered his senior officers to discuss “each operational direction” in Ukraine and “hear (their) proposals on our immediate and medium-term actions”.
Serhiy Naev, commander of the joint forces of the Ukrainian military, said on Sunday that during the Minsk meeting Mr Putin and Mr Lukashenko would discuss “issues of further aggression against Ukraine and greater involvement of the armed forces of Belarus in the operation against Ukraine…in particular, in our opinion, on land.”
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Moscow’s troops attacked northern Ukraine from Belarus at the start of the all-out invasion in February, and Kyiv says Russia continues to use its neighbour’s air bases and airspace to launch missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
Mr Lukashenko claims, without offering evidence, that Belarus is under threat from Ukraine and from its Nato neighbours Poland and Lithuania, and in October he announced that his country would host a joint group of Belarusian and Russian forces. Moscow said 9,000 of its servicemen, 170 tanks and 200 armoured vehicles would join the formation.
The Belarusian dictator, who has run his country since 1994, is deeply reliant on Russian support since huge opposition protests threatened his regime in 2020, leading to a brutal crackdown on his critics. It is not clear, however, whether Mr Lukashenko is ready to order his military to attack Ukraine, or whether all its units would obey such an order.
Senior Ukrainian commander Andriy Kovalchuk told Sky News that his country’s forces “foresee” a new Russian offensive from the north, south and east. “We are considering a possible offensive from Belarus at the end of February, maybe later…We are preparing for it. We are investigating. We look at where they accumulate strength and means. We are preparing,” he said.
Kyiv is only about 150km from the Belarusian border, and Russia’s attack from that direction in February led to weeks of heavy fighting in commuter towns north of the capital such as Bucha and Irpin, where mass graves and alleged atrocities came to light after the invasion force was driven back into Belarus in early April.
In an interview with the Economist, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, said a “very important strategic task for us is to create reserves and prepare for the war, which may take place in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January. It may start not in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv, in the direction of Belarus”.
“Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops. I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv,” he added.
Officials in the Russian city of Belgorod near Ukraine’s eastern border said one person was killed and several injured by a rocket fired from Ukrainian territory on Sunday.
Ukraine said Russia fired 76 missiles at its cities and national grid on Friday, 60 of which were shot down. The strikes caused major blackouts, but Kyiv said that by Saturday night power had been restored to some six million people.