Later this year, Ukraine could be invaded by the neighboring former Soviet Republic Belarus. The announcement came after a February 5 meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was making his second official visit to the capital, Kyiv.
If it comes to pass, this would be the second such sneak attack from a nation not “officially” one of the parties to the war between Ukraine and its much larger neighbor.
Belarus and the Ukraine War
In February 2022, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko allowed his country to be used as the launching pad for the invasion of Ukraine, giving Russia the shortest possible land route to Kyiv. Like the other four offensive thrusts that rolled out of Russia into Ukraine it ultimately failed to reach its objective.
Following their conversations, Zelenskiy stated, “With [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s ambitions and what we see today as he is doing everything he can not to stop this war. [Instead] the fact is that he will push to go further. He will eye other countries. I’m positive. I warn of this absolutely overtly, frankly.
“You will see, he will provoke other countries. Perhaps the next one will be Poland, or the Baltic States. And this isn’t just another part of rhetoric. You will see, in spring, summer or autumn, he will deploy forces on the territory of Belarus.
“And many Europeans, perhaps the United States, will say this an attempt to intimidate Poland, Lithuania, our other Baltic partners. But you will see that he will do everything to clash with them, think about how to provoke them. I don’t know whether there’ll be an invasion, but in any case, he will drag Belarus into the war in this way,”
There At The Beginning
On the ground at the beginning of this conflict was a prominent leader of the Belarus opposition-in-exile, Vadim Prokopiev. A one-time very high-profile businessman in the capital, Minsk, he left Belarus in 2020 before that year’s presidential election—one which is widely assessed as stolen and rife with irregularities.
Speaking from his office in Washington, he described what happened immediately after the war began.
“I had come into Kyiv on the third day after the initial invasion. Working with the Ukrainian units in the area we had proposed was an asymmetrical response on the territory of Belarus and it would have had the full support of the local population. Results would have a psychological impact similar to what resulted when Ukraine’s military later mounted an incursion into the Kursk region of Russia in August 2024.”
In the end, Prokopiev’s plan was rejected by Ukraine’s military high command, and the rest is history. Instead, an uneasy, shaky peace was negotiated between Belarus and Ukraine in 2022.
How Lukashenko Has Maneuvered and Survived
“Agreeing to this kind of peace with a country that he just aided in the invasion of is typical of how he has stayed in power all this time,” said Prokopiev. “Always changing sides—or creating the appearance of such in order to ‘live to fight another day,’ as they say”.
“In beginning of the Ukraine-Russian conflict Lukashenko played the role of the interlocutor with the West,” he continued. “He became a double-agent. He moves back and forth passing messages between Putin and western governments. He continues this being the man in the middle—the indispensable go-between—and keeping everyone suspended in mid-air for years.”
This activity led to the 2014 Minsk-1 and 2015 Minsk-2 agreements on the cessation of hostilities, which quickly collapsed. According to Prokopiev and others, the fact they had no lasting effect did not matter to Lukashenko. “He only wanted to be on the main stage with the other world leaders acting as a middleman to enhance his own legitimacy and giving the appearance of neutrality.”
Lukashenko then changed his course in 2022 when he decided to throw in with Putin and allowed his country to be used as a staging area for thousands of Russian troops, armor, and aircraft used to invade Ukraine. The question is, what was his motivation?
“One could make the case that the West giving Lukashenko a pass all these years on his many human rights violations, election fraud, taking hordes of political prisoners, the torturing, etc.—created incentives for him becoming a willing accomplice to Putin’s invasion,” said a retired long-time US Government analyst of the former USSR.
President Putin watches the Zapad 2021 joint strategic exercises of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.
“We kept hoping that eventually he would moderate his behavior and move towards some independence from Putin,” he continued. “We underestimated his willingness to go to war in order to avoid possible trial as a war criminal.”
As big as that mistake in evaluating Lukashenko’s likely actions was, the Belarus president-for-life “made an even bigger mistake—betting all of his chips on Putin’s blitzkrieg succeeding,” said Prokopiev. “He gambled. And he lost everything.”
Lukashenko was “counting on Putin’s plan to roll over Ukraine’s armed forces and take Kyiv within a few days succeeding,” he explained. “He thought he and Putin would become the winners of this war, and winners, as we know from many historical examples, are not the ones who end up sitting in the dock in The Hague.”
Now, Lukashenko faces a myriad of problems: trying to keep his country from being used in another invasion attempt, as Zelenskiy is predicting. “Any pretense of him not being a direct party to the conflict would then be gone,” said Prokopiev.
The Ukrainian president made it clear that he considered Belarus already involved in this war. In the same statement after his meeting with Lammy, he added that, in his opinion, after missiles were fired on Ukraine from the territory of Belarus, Lukashenko was already at war with Ukraine.
“But their people—no, and their army—not yet,” said Zelenskiy. “But Putin really wants that [to be the case]”.
“What Lukashenko would like now is to resurrect his man in the middle position—to have some role as a mediator in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end this war. He wants to wriggle out from under the sanctions, out from under the title of the man who has stolen one election after another—including the one this past 26 January that now gives him his 7th presidential term.”
Most of all, said Prokopiev, “he hopes lobbyists and others will argue on his behalf—and will say we need to give him sanctions relief. If we are nice to him, they will tell us, this will somehow pull him out of Moscow’s orbit. He will tell Western politicians the reason there was no one in the streets on election day was not because they had no wish to take part in the sham. It is because they are all happy and no one wants to demonstrate against him. So, make him their partner again.”
Belarus: A Perennial Problem If Not Finally Solved
But Prokopiev and others state there is no chance for a kinder, gentler Lukashenko. The country is too profoundly dependent on Moscow economically and moves closer in its growing alliance with China all the time.
Putin at St Petersburg International Economic Forum plenary session. Photo: TASS
Opposition organizations claim to have obtained copies of contracts and other information from multiple industry sources, which unearthed details of recent Belarus acquisitions of critical military items. These electronic components are made in China and shipped through Belarus and then into Russia. If correct, this allowed Beijing to avoid being sanctioned for illegally supporting Putin’s war machine.
One possibility is that Chinese components used in guidance systems allowed Russia to keep building high-yield glide bombs and missiles that have destroyed Ukrainian cities. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russia dropped no less than 3,000 of them in March 2024 alone.
These suspected links to the PRC are part of a long-term effort to plant their flag in Eastern Europe. As far back as 2017, Chinese defense companies sent large delegations to the Belarus national defense expo, MILEX. Delegations were much larger and headed by senior people who were not even seen in other countries closer to China at exhibitions twice the size of this one.
The head of the People’s Republic of China delegation was one of the most powerful figures in the People’s Liberation Army, Gen. Zhang Youxia, one of the highest-ranking members of the Central Military Commission. Again, a sign Belarus is Beijing’s most important client in the region.
Therefore, says Prokopiev, it is time to have a separate strategy for Belarus—one that treats separately and independently of any Russia policy. As for Lukashenko, forcing him out of Moscow’s orbit only pushes him into China’s—hardly an improvement and probably worse. There is no happy scenario that involves him staying in power. He will always be a problem.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
