Belarus ‘head to head’ with NATO as troops move west

President Lukashenko blames NATO for rising tensions and says Russia is ready to use its ‘entire arsenal’ if threatened.

Alexander Lukashenko said combat-ready troops had been moved from Vitebsk, close to Russia, to the western end of Belarus. Picture: AFP

Belarus has moved troops closer to the border with Poland, as President Alexander Lukashenko warned any showdown between his country, ally Russia and the West could end in nuclear “apocalypse”.

The long-serving dictator said on Thursday that combat-ready troops had been moved from Vitebsk, close to Russia, to the western end of Belarus in response to a NATO build-up across the border.

“We’ve transferred a couple of battalions and are standing head to head with NATO,” he said. “These battalions are at full operational readiness, with a readiness of three hours from leaving their place of deployment.”

Mr Lukashenko, 69, said there was an intensifying threat to Belarus’s security because of the war in Ukraine, with a risk of military incidents along the country’s shared frontier.

He claimed 120,000 Ukrainian troops were stationed along the Belarusian border and opposition groups inside the country were plotting to seize territory and appeal to NATO for help.

“The real risk is having a hotspot in the region,” he told delegates at the Seventh Belarusian People’s Congress in the capital, Minsk. “Washington is doing everything to drag our country into the conflict, to launch a mechanism to involve other states, to weaken Western Europe and Eastern Europe.”

Referring to Washington’s new $US61bn ($93.6bn) military aid package, he said the US had “converted Ukraine into a drug addict who is kept on a short leash with promises of a new dose of additional weapons, including long-range weapons and financial infusions”.

NATO had expanded into Sweden and Finland, was building aerodromes, military bases and naval facilities, and generally “raising the temperature of hostility” towards Belarus and Russia, Mr Lukashenko added. “Any incautious word or movement could cause an open armed conflict, right up to the use of nuclear weapons.”

He said it was “very dangerous” that the US was now supplying longer-range weapons to Ukraine. “And if the situation becomes threatening for the internal situation in Russia, Russia will use the entire arsenal it has. And that will be apocalypse.”

He insisted, however, there would no Belarusian aggression against Poland. “We’re not planning to fight them. We don’t need that,” he said.

Mr Lukashenko is known for his bluster but his comments indicate the anger in Minsk and Moscow over the new aid package for Kyiv, which had been stalled for months in congress.

The Belarusian leader confirmed “several dozen” Russian tactical nuclear weapons had been deployed in Belarus last year under an agreement struck with President Vladimir Putin.

The Times