KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine has boosted its forces in the northern region near Belarus to counter any possible renewed Russian attack across the border, Ukraine’s General Staff said on Thursday.
“At the current time the creation of a strike force (in Belarus) is not observable. (But) there are and will be threats. We are reacting, we have already increased our troops in the northern direction,” Oleksii Hromov, deputy head of the General Staff’s Main Operations Directorate, told a regular briefing.
Belarus is Russia’s main ally in the conflict and has allowed Russian forces to use its territory as a springboard to attack Ukraine.
Russia is sending thousands of troops back to Belarus, prompting fears the two countries could be planning a joint incursion across Ukraine’s northern border.
That would be politically risky for Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko – and Russian forces are already struggling to hold their current lines around the southern city of Kherson and in Donbas in the east.
But the prospect alone is a distraction and a concern for Kyiv as Minsk comes under pressure from Moscow to step-up its support.
File photo courtesy of the Photo: Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
