Minsk is taking measures that can be perceived as eliberate steps in preparations towards war against Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine states. In particular, the lower chamber of belarusian parliament adopted the law introducing death penalty for high treason by military servicemen and authorities.
The intel was voiced out by Oleksii Hromov, Deputy Head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during a briefing at the Military Media Center.
Read more: Another "Sudden" Military Training in belarus: the belarusian Military Did Start to Move Towards Ukraine
Although he stressed, it doesn’t mean the invasion of belarusian forces will begin any soon. First, belarus has no aviation component in place, which apparently is the main indication of readiness for an offense. For comparison: in February, russia had the following forces deployed for invasion: one A-50U AEW&C aircraft, 32 attack planes, 15 fighters and 77 helicopters.
"Taking into account all our available data, at this point of time the possibility of the enemy carrying out an offensive operation from the territory of belarus remains low," Oleksii Hromov noted.
However, according to the information shared at the briefing, the activity of russian forces in belarus is expanding. Military personnel of the russian army are training there, with belarusian regular army officers involved in the training course. These are the soldiers of the 2nd "Taman" Motor Rifle Division of the 1st Tank Division of the russian Western Military District, about 11,700 personnel in total.
Besides, there is information about creation of new units of russian army in belarus, in particular, of the "partially mobilized" servicemen. The officers stopped informing them about the duration of training or plans regarding their redeployments or involvement in hostilities.
Minsk is creating "territorial defense forces" and prolonged the ban on visiting regions bordering with Ukraine
The russians are continuing to transfer military equipment via belarus, too. Last week, two battalion sets or tanks were spotted on the move (about 60 units) towards the training grounds where the russian military personnel are stationed, namely "Obuz-Lesnovsky" and "Losvido". Also, some russian aircraft have returned to belarus recently: the earlier mentioned A-50U and three MiG-31K – carriers of hypersonic "Kinzhal" missiles.
We should mention as well that Minsk has announced another "sudden" drills the other day. Deviating from the announced areas of training, a number of military vehicles were seen moving towards the Ukrainian border.
Yet, the drills on creating bridge crossings over the Niman and Berezyna rivers are carried out as planned. The training involves units of the 11th and 19th Mechanized Brigades. Defense Express analyzed the movements of the belarusian forces in detail in a separate article.
Some belarusian vehicles were marked with a tactical sign – a red rectangle
Noteworthy detail about the drills is that in the duration, quite a risky action was performed – midnight water obstacle crossing, furthermore in winter.
Yet again, the key factor that decides whether or not russian and belarusian forces are ready for one more attempt to bite into northern Ukraine will be redeployment of addinitional aviation, according to the General Staff. On a side note, while the relocation of aircraft can take a fairly short amount of time, the actual preparation of aircraft for combat missions is an activity that can hardly be hidden, and soon enough all intelligence means of Ukraine and its partners would notice suspicious behaviour and respond appropriately.
Read more: russia is Ramping Up Production of Domestic Equipment, Including by Reducing Quality of Products
