Security Threats To Belarus

Poland and Ukraine, which clinched a long-negotiated comprehensive security pact in early June, appear to be coordinating a new military pressure campaign against Belarus. Poland and its NATO allies began their “Eastern Aurora” air defense drills on 1 August, which were reported as running parallel with its “Safe Podlasie” initiative that’ll boost its combined eastern border force to 17,000 troops. A little more than a week later, Ukrainian drones violated Belarusian airspace, prompting a sharp rebuke from Minsk.

President Aleksandr Lukashenko said that several of them were shot down and then ordered the armed forces to strengthen their southern border defenses. This restores the status quo there from approximately one month ago after a reported Ukrainian military buildup led to Belarus responding in kind. Those tensions were alleviated after Belarus claimed that Ukraine pulled back its forces, thus leading to a reciprocal move on its part, but now it’s as if that never happened.

The military-strategic context within which this arguably coordinated pressure campaign is unfolding concerns Ukraine’s conventional military foray into Russia’s Kursk Region, which many believe that Kiev commenced out of desperation to force Moscow into transferring troops to there from Donbass. The timed worsening of tensions along Belarus’ periphery with Poland and Ukraine appears to be part of this plan aimed at stretching Russia’s forces as far as possible in order to prevent a possible breakthrough.

It's also possible that Ukraine is contemplating a Kursk-like incursion into Belarus or wants to push it into carrying out preemptive cross-border strikes, both in furtherance of the aforesaid goal but possibly also to serve as the tripwire for a conventional NATO intervention. Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reported earlier in the spring that Belarus’ involvement in the conflict could lead to that happening, though it’s unclear whether NATO would react that way in response to Ukraine invading Belarus or provoking it.

Apart from allowing Russia to use its territory as a staging ground during the special operation’s initial phase, Belarus hasn’t played any other role in hostilities, though it importantly remains Russia’s most loyal ally and thus serves as a shield for defending the Union State’s western flank. President Lukashenko knows that his country would struggle to fight a full-fledged conflict, which is why he’s done his utmost to avoid having it become embroiled in the ongoing one and sought to bolster its defensive capabilities.

To that end, he allowed Russia to deploy tactical nuclear missiles on its territory and recently carry out associated exercises there, which are aimed at deterring large-scale aggression. Nevertheless, it’s still being militarily pressured by Poland and Ukraine right now, and the latter just sent some drones across the border in a signal that low-level aggression against Belarus will still occur. If those two decide to ramp up their campaign, then it wouldn’t be unthinkable for Lithuania to participate in it too.

Belarusian KGB chief Ivan Tertel claimed earlier in the spring that his country had recently thwarted a plot to attack it with combat drones from that neighboring country, which hosts Western-backed non-systemic “opposition” leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who led the failed summer 2020 coup. That was the same year that Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania established the so-called “Lublin Triangle”, which essentially functions as a partial modern-day revival of the erstwhile Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Readers should remember that Belarus was controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for centuries, which itself was subordinated to the Polish Crown for a little over two hundred years after the 1569 Union of Lublin that followed those two’s dynastic Union of Krewo in 1385. The formation of the “Lublin Triangle” therefore carried with it the implied objective of one day incorporating Belarus after a successful Color Revolution there.

It was around that same time during summer’s failed coup attempt that President Lukashenko claimed that Poland was plotting to annex Belarus’ Grodno Region, which is where most of its historic Polish minority resides. Although the vast majority of Poles there are loyal citizens, a few have been accused of anti-state activities in the decades since independence. It’s therefore possible that Poland plotted to use some of them as the pretext for militarily intervening in Belarus but then had its plans foiled.

Another threat to Belarus’ territorial integrity might soon come from Ukraine after Zelensky issued a decree in January where he implied the revival of the ‘Ukrainian People’s Republic’s” (UPR) claims to historic Russian lands in the east. Although none of those that he mentioned are in Belarus, that former polity’s claims extended into what’s nowadays southern Belarus. Seeing as how he’s since attacked those parts of Kursk Region that were claimed by UPR, other regions elsewhere might soon be targeted too.

This observation adds a twist to the latest Belarusian-Ukrainian tensions that were brought back to the fore after last week’s drone incident that was mentioned in this analysis’ introduction. While Ukraine might attack Belarus or provoke it to attack Ukraine in order to get NATO to conventionally intervene in its support, Zelensky might also want to stoke ultra-nationalist sentiment in society as a distraction from his side’s setbacks in Donbass by more drawing attention to his implied revival of the UPR’s claims there.

Whatever the “Lublin Triangle’s” intentions may be, it’s also important to mention that their Polish and Ukrainian members agreed to create an informal alliance with the UK in February 2022 one week before the special operation began. Germany is another relevant actor in all of this given that its first full-time foreign deployment since World War II will be a 5,000-person tank brigade in Lithuania. It also pioneered the “military Schengen” in late January with Poland for facilitating logistical access to Lithuania.

The Netherlands signed on as well, but its role relates to enabling the US Navy to unload heavy equipment at its ports, after which those supplies could then be speedily deployed to the front via Germany and Poland. France announced earlier this summer that it plans to sign onto this pact too, while Belgium and Luxembourg are currently the only two observers. Even so, they’d all have to transit through Germany and Poland to reach the Union State, thus cementing those two’s central roles.

It turns out that Germany is doing more than just building a base next to Belarus and helping to expedite NATO’s deployment to its borders. One of its mercenaries by the name of Rico Krieger was detained by Minsk late last year and then sentenced to death over the summer for involvement in terrorist-related crimes. He was then pardoned by President Lukashenko and included in this month’s historic prisoner swap, but his case proves that some Germans are now directly trying to destabilize Belarus.

Each of these threats is serious on their own, yet they’re all nowadays converging as Poland and Ukraine arguably coordinate a new military pressure campaign against Belarus, which coincides with Kiev’s conventional military foray into Russia’s Kursk Region. The most immediate goal appears to be to stretch Russia’s forces as far as possible to prevent them from achieving a breakthrough in Donbass, though supplementary goals might include dragging Belarus into the conflict or at least internally destabilizing it.

Full-fledged conventional aggression against it from NATO, particularly Poland and Lithuania but possibly including British-based units in the first and German-based ones in the second, is unlikely due to Belarus’ hosting of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Having said that, this might not deter Ukraine from attempting to replicate a Kursk-like incursion there after the ongoing one didn’t cross Russia’s red lines for triggering a nuclear response, so Belarus should prepare to fend off a similar such attack just in case.