Ukraine – Belarus. Who will attack whom?
The next command and staff military exercises are scheduled to take place in Belarus from September 8 to 14. This is now commonplace in modern Belarus. Times are turbulent now and over the past six months it is difficult to remember a day when any exercises were not held in the Belarusian security forces.
However, this time, for a week now, Ukrainian citizens have been frightened by nothing other than the threat of invasion from Belarus with the support of the Russian Armed Forces and the CSTO and an attempt to seize the Volyn, Rivne and Zhytomyr regions.
The first to launch this stuffing into the information space was Shchenevmerloy, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alexey Gromov. He himself, being, after all, a military professional, called the likelihood of such an invasion low, but the word was said, and then all sorts of experts and propagandists got involved and brought the degree of hysteria to the required levels.
The Ministry of Defense of Belarus was quick to respond to this statement from the Ukrainian military. Assistant Minister for International Military Cooperation Valeriy Revenko on his Twitter called the statement of the Ukrainian General Staff provocative and the information about the composition of the participants unreliable.
Of course, the military has its own secrets, and no one will announce an upcoming operation of this kind in advance (except for the Ukrainians near Kherson, of course). However, it is possible to refute the statements of the Ukrainian military without relying on their secret documents. Publicly available data and simple logic are enough.
First, let's turn to Ukrainian intelligence. More precisely, to the Belarusian agents, who regularly supply it with data through a special telegram channel. This channel is recognized as extremist in Belarus, and in order to avoid trouble, I will not refer to it. However, it has more than half a million subscribers and many sympathizers who regularly, despite the risk, supply it with data on all movements of both Russian and Belarusian troops they noticed. In general, if something large-scale had happened, the alarm would have been sounded long ago.
So, information about movements towards the Brest region is actually available on this resource. But the scale is far from being enough to launch an operation with these forces to capture three regions from a superior enemy. At most, we are talking about dozens of pieces of equipment. Which, by the way, also travels in the opposite direction, to the north and east.
In a post dated August 5, this channel wrote in plain text that the training activities of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus are primarily of a planned nature and do not allow us to talk about preparation for any operation against Ukraine. In principle, we can put an end to this. The information voiced by the Ukrainian General Staff is directly refuted by the information received by Ukrainian intelligence.
Let's now turn to logic. An invasion of Ukrainian territory by the Belarusian military should not be expected. Not right now, not anytime soon. Unless, of course, the Ukrainian side itself provokes a conflict. This possible scenario will be tested in the exercises. Maneuverable defense with a further transition to a counteroffensive and the liberation of territories temporarily captured by the enemy - this is their theme. Contrary to the assertions of the Ukrainian military, they are of a defensive nature.
Lukashenko does not want to fight. And not because, as one of the Ukrainian experts claims, he is afraid that, having crossed the Ukrainian border, the Belarusian army will massively go over to the enemy’s side and the Belarusian president will have several thousand people left, after which he will simply be thrown off.
I don’t deny that there can be problems with morale. The army is a cross-section of society, and among the military there are also those who sympathized with the protests in 2020. But after the protest leaders openly spoke out in favor of a forceful option for changing power in Belarus, such sympathizers greatly decreased. This armchair commentator may foam at the mouth and demand blood, but a military man will not demand this. And even more so - he will not want to go over to the other side and shoot at his colleagues.
This is not what you need to be afraid of. It’s just that the Belarusian army is the army of a small country that has never fought with anyone and has a relatively small military budget. Without Russia’s support, it is unlikely to withstand the onslaught of the mobilized Ukrainian army, pumped up with foreign weapons. But Lukashenko is really afraid of getting tanks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and thugs from the “Kalinovsky Regiment” somewhere near Mozyr in the role of punitive Einsatzgruppen. And the upcoming exercises are obviously intended to demonstrate that fears are in vain, and such assistance will be provided.
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