On December 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Minsk for the first time after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic and met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The two mainly talked about the economy of the "Russia-Belarus Federation" , energy, and military cooperation processes, and almost never mentioned Ukraine at the press conference.
But at the same time, the Ukrainian side is increasingly expressing concern that Russia will attack Kyiv again next year through the border of Belarus.
Will the onshore battlefield in the Ukrainian capital, which has been away for nearly a year, reignite the flames of war?
The relationship between Putin and Lukashenko can be regarded as defined by the latter's re-election in 2020 suspected of electoral fraud and the large-scale demonstrations that detonated thereafter.
"Russia-Belarus Confederation"
Before the election, Lukashenko always wanted to walk the middle line between Russia and Europe and the United States, and did not want Putin to "actually eat" Belarus through the "Russia-Belarus Union State" that Putin had promoted in 1997.
In February 2020, the then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a rare visit to Belarus and met with Lukashenko on the occasion of the failure to negotiate an oil supply contract between Russia and Belarus. Talking and laughing.
Before the Belarusian presidential election in the same year, Lukashenko even detained 33 members of the Russian mercenary group "Wagner", saying that they deliberately disrupted the upcoming general election.
However, after the mass demonstrations and official suppression after the election, European and American countries were limited by the ideology of "value diplomacy", and it was difficult to develop relations with Lukashenko, and Putin immediately became Lukashenko's only supporter.
The price, of course, is that the progress of the "Russian-Belarusian Federation" has once again become a reality.
At the joint press conference between Putin and Lukashenko, Putin publicly refuted the claim that Russia is "eating" Belarus, saying that he only seeks economic cooperation between the two sides, accusing this statement of "malicious intentions to hinder the integration of Russia and Belarus." who" did.
However, objectively speaking, Russia, not Belarus, is of course the speaker in the integration of Russia and Belarus, and Lukashenko's "obedience" to Putin's request has long been in the situation of Russia's march into Kyiv on the border of Belarus at the end of February this year clear and distinct.
On December 20, Lukashenko met with Putin who was visiting Minsk.
(Reuters)
Military operations in Belarus
The "attack on Kyiv" at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war ended in failure after one month. Afterwards, people's livelihood in Kyiv almost completely returned to normal until Russia launched an energy infrastructure attack in October that caused a large-scale power outage.
At a time when the various fronts on the Ukrainian battlefield are currently stalemate, whether Russia will use the Kyiv front to break the deadlock has become a major focus of attention.
Valeriy Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, recently said in an exclusive interview with The Economist that Russia is "100% preparing" and that it will launch "in February, at the latest in March, at the earliest in late January". Large-scale offensive, saying "I have no doubt that they will attack Kyiv again".
Although the Ukrainian statement may be motivated by public relations lobbying the West for more military assistance, the development of the military situation in Belarus does show signs of renewed war.
Since the summer of this year, the Belarusian army has conducted military exercises along its borders with Ukraine and Poland.
On the same day that Putin visited Minsk, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its troops stationed in Belarus in October will be conducting regional military exercises.
Ukrainian official sources also stated that since autumn, the number of soldiers in Belarus has continued to increase, and its soldiers trained in Belarus have no specific plans to return to Russia, and the elite Russian First Tank Corps is also training in Belarus.
As early as early October, Lukashenko ordered the army to complete the review of all eligible service personnel by the end of the year.
Subsequently, Moscow also publicly announced that its 9,000 soldiers, 170 tanks and 200 armored vehicles will be sent to Belarus.
By mid-October, Belarusian intelligence and security agencies had successively warned Belarusian volunteers fighting in Ukraine and Western forces that they might invade Belarus.
From late October to November, both Belarus and Russia conducted various drills in the border areas between Belarus, Poland and Ukraine.
On December 1, Russian officials went to Belarus to inspect the Russian army.
On December 3, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Minsk to discuss military cooperation and revise an agreement on joint provisions for regional security.
Before Putin's visit to Minsk, Belarus conducted a surprise inspection of combat readiness.
During the visit, Putin also stated that Russia would provide Belarusian pilots with flight training on fighter jets capable of carrying "special warheads". Lukashenko thanked Putin for providing Belarus with the Iskander fighter jet capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Short-range ballistic missiles and the S-400 air defense system.
Belarusian official media said that relevant training has already started.
The report of "Russia Today" (RT) uses the "nuclear sharing" policy of the United States to deploy nuclear weapons in NATO allies to understand Putin's arms sharing with Belarus.
Against the background that Belarus seems to be preparing for war, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Zaluzhny is particularly worried about the hundreds of thousands of recruits recruited by Russia’s earlier mobilization order. Lugansk) for example.
He is also preserving the combat power of the newly added reserves of the Ukrainian army to avoid sending them to the front line quickly to deal with potential future offensives by Russian recruits.
On December 7, in Kyiv, Ukraine, workers cleared snow on the road.
(Reuters)
Regarding the possibility of renewed war between Belarus and Ukraine, the analysis of the Institute of War Studies (ISW), a Washington think tank, still believes that Belarus is "unlikely" to participate in the war.
According to the institute, Lukashenko has been promoting the threat of NATO invasion on the western front of Belarus domestically as a reason why Belarus cannot go south to participate in Russia's war against Ukraine.
At the same time, under the premise that Belarus is said to have been continuously sending armaments to Russia, and the country's military strength is limited, its participation in the second attack on Kyiv all the way can only dilute Ukraine's military strength on other front lines.
Some analysts also believe that the recent upsurge in the military situation in Belarus is actually a kind of propaganda war.
Regardless of whether Belarus will participate in the war in the coming year, and whether Russia will use Belarus to send troops south to attack Kyiv in the coming year, there will only be one day when the "Russian-Belarus Alliance" will still exist, and the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow will remain unsolved, and the "Kyiv attack" will still happen. It is a lingering potential crisis.
The existence of this potential crisis shows that this Russia-Ukraine war must not be done hastily like the conflict in 2014, otherwise it will only be a matter of time before the conflict erupts again.
Putin: The situation in some parts of Ukraine is "extremely difficult" for Russia