Recently, the issue of participation of the Belarussian troops in the war in Ukraine has gained new momentum. It intensified due to increasing reports of movement of Belarusian military equipment to the border with Ukraine. Also, military exercises of the Armed Forces of Belarus are quite threatening as well (in particular, three times in five days spent rafting on armored personnel carriers, the last exercise was conducted 20 km from the border with Ukraine). Let alone reports that Belarus plans to double its army.
At the same time, today the General Staff of Ukraine published the following information: currently up to seven battalions of the Armed Forces of Belarus are concentrated in the Volyn and Polissya directions, which are engaged in strengthening the Ukrainian-Belarusian border in Brest and Gomel regions.
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According to own sources, Defense Express found out that these are six battalions: two from the 38th Separate Guards Air Assault Brigade (Brest), the 103rd Separate Guards Airborne Brigade (Vitebsk), the 6th Separate Mechanized Brigade (Grodno), and I addition to that a detachment of the 5th Spetsnaz Brigade (Marjina Gorka).
According to open source data, it’s possible to roughly calculate overall military force.
For example, the 38th Separate Guards Air Assault Brigade has up to 1800 servicemen and armed with BRT-80, 88mm BM-37 mortars, 122mm howitzers D-30, several 23mm anti-aircraft twin-barreled autocannon ZU-23, and Igla MANPADS.
The 103rd Separate Guards Airborne Brigade comes next, having 1300-1400 servicemen at disposal, armed with BTR-70MB1, Nona-M1 mortar, Volat V1 armored vehicle, Kaiman armored scout car and Chinese Dongfeng Mengshi EQ2050F armored vehicle.
At the same time, the 6th Separate Mechanized Brigade has about 1500 servicemen, equipped with -72B, BMP-2, BRM-1K, MT-LB, Konkurs and Shturm-S self-propelled ATGM systems, also mortar systems as 2S12 Sani and BM-37, Gvozdika and Akatsiya SPGs, Grad MLRS. Plus the 5th Spetsnaz Brigade detachment.
Defense Express draws the following conclusion: it can’t be stated that there are signs of forming a strike group to conduct offensive operations in these areas. However, the threat from this country has not disappeared: the fact of such activity near Ukrainian borders forces the Armed Forces of Ukraine to keep the number of military equipment and servicemen for possible deterrence of the attack of the Armed Forces of Belarus.
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