For the past month, Russian soldiers have been gathering in Belarus. Thousands of conscripts are assembling. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russia’s war effort goes from bad to worse: Kyiv’s forces are continuing to advance in Kherson. Does Putin think the build-up of forces in Belarus can help him turn the tide in his war?
So far, Belarus’s involvement has been largely passive. The country’s dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko is allowing Russia to pelt Ukraine with missiles from behind its borders. Minsk also provided crucial safe passage to troops attacking the country from the north in February. But, for the most part, it has done its best to try and stay out of the war while attempting to avoid angering Putin.
Now there are signs that things might be changing. Coercing Belarus’s dictator Lukashenko to join Russia’s invasion 2.0 makes strategic sense for Putin’s latest general in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin. Kyiv is easily accessible from Belarus and hard to get to from Russia. A successful advance through Belarus would relieve Russian forces in the south and east of Ukraine and deal a tough blow to Zelensky. Should we worry?
The short answer is: not necessarily. Putin is under pressure. The Kremlin’s right-wing factions are calling for an escalation of the ‘special military operation’. Yet Russia’s president knows that a solution involving the deployment of Belarus’s army could be a crucial misstep. He would leave the frying pan but end up in the fire.
Ukraine’s successes remain encouraging. Together with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s fighting talk, they keep the West under pressure to support Kyiv. But Western support is being held at arm’s length. This fight is one the West is happy to provide the resources for, but only on one condition: that its weapons are not aimed into Russia. This means that even if Kyiv regains all of the territory snatched from it, there is the risk they will continue to be perpetually bombed and attacked from inside Russia’s borders. The bombings would create a 15 mile no-go zone in a highly populated part of Ukraine.
Putin recognises that using Belarus to attack Ukraine is a huge gamble
If Belarus takes a more active role in Putin’s war, the equation would change dramatically. Lukashenko’s status as Putin’s puppet was cemented in 2020 when he was forced to rely on Russian security forces to stave of popular protest against his ‘re-election’ as Belarus’s president. This year, Putin began to call in his debt.
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Lukashenko dutifully changed the country’s constitution to once again allow the Kremlin to station and launch nuclear weapons from its territory (Belarus, as well as Ukraine and Kazakhstan, gave away its nuclear arsenal to Russia in 1994 in accordance with the Budapest Memorandum which guaranteed territorial integrity of those countries). In effect, Belarus agreed earlier in the year to become once again part of Russia’s nuclear umbrella even though – Schrodinger’s cat-like – it is still a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (since 1993). The current international thinking seems to be: ‘If Belarus wants to turn itself into the world’s tenth nuclear power and Russia’s nuclear slave, what can you do?’
That all changes if Belarus goes to war. If its troops are mobilised, Minsk is likely to be attacked. Unlike its fight against Putin, there are no conditions stopping Ukraine from deploying Western weapons against Lukashenko. In fact, hostilities with Belarus would give Ukraine plausible cause to pre-emptively strike any potential nuclear sites in the country. It would finally create an opportunity to neutralise any future attempts by Putin to turn Minsk into a nuclear power.
The Kremlin is aware of this. Russia has painted itself in a corner. Its army is buckling under the strain of invading a hostile country. On paper, it has an impressive mass of several hundred thousand troops fighting against Ukraine. Yet, after almost 250 days of war, it is clear that, rather than hardened soldiers, many of those fighting are low-skilled soldiers with inadequate kit and training.
Russia’s attempts to salvage its dwindling military have so far smacked of desperation. What nation has a tin of combat-ready troops at hand, ready to open? The Russian Ministry of Defence rummaged through its history books and came up with the idea of recruiting criminals. This might have worked when armies were still fighting with bayonets; it doesn’t in the face of modern military equipment. Convicts might feel less compunction in killing, yet their ability to master skills quickly cannot be guaranteed.
The next step was to broaden out the draft: a figure of 300,000 reservists was mooted. But that huge number misses something about the peculiarity of Russian reservist law, which effectively views every adult male aged 18 to 65 – and all medical personnel – as possible ‘reservists’. Of course, just because someone might be counted as a reservist doesn’t mean calling them up is easy. This became clear from the very un-Russian scenes of mayhem seen when reservists started being enlisted, with the authorities picking people up, sometimes literally, in the streets. Dragging a large number of unwilling citizens into the war effort risked sparking popular unrest on the streets of Russia. This plan has, for now, been more or less dropped.
Yet still Putin faces a problem: the real bane of his existence is Russia’s right-wing, ultra-nationalist faction. They are the only political group to whom the Kremlin has traditionally allowed a voice of criticism, mainly because they are so radical that they usually end up supporting the Kremlin anyway. Its members include people like Aleksandr Dugin who, when his daughter Darya was killed by a car bomb earlier this year, continued to drum his ultra-nationalist message. Putin’s problem is that the Ukraine war has increased this group’s hold on power. They want Kyiv to pay the price for the damage it has inflicted on Russia’s ego.
Belarus has the benefit of having a ready, if small, standing army that can be credibly deployed. An attack from Belarus would appease Russia’s right-wing commentariat – potentially the real reason Putin is instructing Lukashenko to get ready to fight.
But it’s a move Putin would surely soon regret. The sole virtue for the Kremlin of deploying Belarus’s army is that it is in marching shape. Beyond that, there is a big downside: Lukashenko’s position in Belarus is highly precarious. Involving his country in a war simply to preserve his dictatorial power would make toppling him much easier.
Putin recognises that using Belarus to attack Ukraine is a huge gamble. But Russia’s leader is running out of options, and he knows he must act soon to appease the ultra-nationalists at his door.
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