Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba published a video about the five reasons why he believes that Belarus might be about to attack Ukraine. Nexta relied on AI to translate it into English and summarized his arguments in their post about it. The reason why it’s important to fact-check his points is because Zelensky just threatened to capture Lukashenko like Trump captured Maduro on the pretext of punishing him for at minimum allowing Russia to launch another offensive against Ukraine from Belarus.
Kuleba’s points are that the Belarusian Army ramped up training under Russia’s supervision, cooperation between their forces is growing, reservists are being called up more frequently, air defenses are being strengthened, and large-scale command-and-control exercises took place earlier this year. These paired with Zelensky’s claims about the construction of roads near the border and the establishment of artillery positions nearby to craft the narrative of the Belarusian front’s possibly impending reopening.
For starters, Kuleba’s five arguments and Zelensky’s two points don’t automatically suggest offensive plans on Russia’s and/or Belarus’ part but possibly defensive ones, though the Russian/Belarusian-Ukrainian security dilemma accounts for why Kiev would interpret such moves as offensive. It’s also of course possible and even likely that this isn’t an innocent misinterpretation of intent on Ukraine’s part but a deliberate provocation for turning up the heat on this front to divert Russian troops from Donbass.
Whatever Ukraine’s motives might be, Belarus’ are to retain dialogue with the US in the hope of receiving more sanctions relief, but these sanctions would be reimposed and even tightened if Belarus attacked Ukraine or allowed Russia to launch another offensive from its territory. The same goes for Russia, which partially explains Putin’s reluctance to at least reciprocally escalate after every Western-backed Ukrainian provocation like last summer’s large-scale drone attack against Russia’s nuclear triad.
Not only would the reopening of the Belarusian front by that country and/or Russia immediately end their respective talks with the US, but it would also immediately worsen tensions with NATO, whose Polish vanguard already commands the bloc’s third-largest military behind the US and Turkiye. In fact, those two’s intel chiefs warned about Polish-emanating threats in early April, and this Damocles’ sword is arguably responsible for accelerating their military cooperation that Ukraine now claims is a threat.
It’s unlikely that either of them would accept these consequences, the second of which risks spiraling into a hot NATO-Russian war, just to open reopen the Belarusian front that Ukraine has been preparing to defend against since Russia’s withdrawal from Kiev. The terrain is also very difficult for any attackers who don’t have the benefit of surprise like Russia did during the start of the special operation. Typically cautious Putin therefore isn’t expected to authorize this since the costs far outweigh the benefits.
Kuleba and Zelensky are thus fearmongering about the reopening of the Belarusian front for ulterior reasons divorced from the objective reality of the conflict’s military-political dynamics. Possible motives include manipulating the US into resuming its pressure campaigns against Belarus and Russia, deterring Trump from suspending indirect arms transfers to Ukraine via NATO’s purchases as punishment for its refusal to help the US reopen Hormuz, and/or stirring trouble to divert Russian troops from Donbass.
