Even as Ukrainian forces dig in to defend the roughly 400 square miles of Russian territory they have seized in the Kursk offensive, Kyiv finds itself increasingly concerned about a new and major military buildup in neighboring Belarus.
According to an August 25 statement from the Ukrainian foreign ministry, “Belarus’ armed forces are concentrating a significant number of personnel, including Special Operations Forces, weapons, and military equipment, including tanks, artillery, [multiple launch rocket systems], air defense systems, and engineering equipment, in the Gomel region near Ukraine’s northern border under the guise of exercises. The presence of mercenaries of the former Wagner PMC was also recorded.”
Minsk has actually been supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine from its very outset, indeed prior to the invasion. Belarus permitted Russian forces to train on its territory for weeks beforehand. Those units never left the country, and Russian forces were able to mass on the Belarusian border with Ukraine prior to the invasion.
When the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022 Russia fired artillery and launched aircraft and missiles, including ballistic missiles, from Belarusian territory. Russian troops crossed into Ukraine; the Belarus border offered the shortest distance to Kyiv. Belarus provided logistics support to the invaders inside Ukraine.
Although Russian units withdrew to Belarus two months after they had crossed the border, Minsk has continued to provide Russian troops with a range of support, including reconnaissance, electronic warfare and land-based air defense. Wounded Russian troops are being treated in Belarusian hospitals.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko summed up his nation’s support for the invasion by asserting that the role of Belarus forces was to protect their Russian counterparts’ rear. In addition, however, some 12,000 troops from Russia’s Western Military District were training in Belarus, in addition to the 2,300 already stationed there.
Furthermore, in a move that no doubt was intended to underscore Russian threats that it could employ tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, in March 2023, Putin announced that Russia would station such weapons in Belarus under a nuclear sharing agreement, and to that end had transferred Iskander short-range nuclear capable ballistic missile launchers. Russia then began training Belarusian troops to operate the missile systems.
The current buildup is thus the latest and most threatening manifestation of Belarus’s consistent support for Russian forces since the invasion began.
Minsk has not challenged Kyiv’s description of the Belarus force buildup along the 674-mile border between the two countries. Indeed, the Belarusian defense ministry announced that it was moving tanks to the Ukrainian border, while Lukashenko personally announced on Aug. 18 that about one-third of his country’s army was deploying to the border. The following day, he also announced the deployment of even more forces to the border. These included air defense units and additional aircraft.
Since Belarus’s land forces, including its special operating forces, number in total about 48,000 troops, Lukashenko’s announcements mean that no more than about 19,000 personnel have massed at the border. Moreover, considerably less than 10,000 of these troops could be considered combat-ready.
Minsk’s buildup along its Ukrainian border does not truly indicate that it intends to have its thousands of its troops cross into Ukrainian territory. Instead, it is meant to rattle the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s forces are already spread thin, and are losing ground in the south and east, while seeking to consolidate their position in the Kursk region. They are in a poor position to redeploy units northward to the Belarus border.
Nevertheless, Ukraine has other means, notably missiles and drones, with which it could strike targets in Belarus, including Russian targets; it has done so sporadically since the war began. According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, that would change in the event that Belarus entered the war. As the Ministry statement put it, “all troop concentrations, military facilities, and supply routes in Belarus will become legitimate targets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
It is true that, since Belarus hosts Russian nuclear weapons, the buildup raises the specter of a tactical nuclear attack in the event that Minsk joins the Russian offensive operation. In practice, however, it is highly unlikely that Minsk would risk the consequences of employing nuclear weapons, even in the face of Russian pressure to do so.
Finally, Lukashenko will probably hesitate to go beyond his current efforts in support of the Russian invasion. He has faced down domestic opposition for years, but attacking Ukraine would not only energize opposition to his regime but also upset many in his inner circle, who are already uneasy about the country’s role in support of Russia’s war. Indeed, a Ukrainian response that hit targets in Belarus could sufficiently destabilize his authoritarian government to the point that it is overthrown.
Lukashenko often has resorted to bluster in the past, perhaps to assuage his ally in the Kremlin. But he has not survived as Europe’s three-decades-long dictator because of his rashness. His primary objective remains his own survival, and to that end he will likely go no further than rattling his country’s saber but ultimately leaving it sheathed.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
