The head of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, made the announcement on Sunday, according to the Belta state news agency, that Minsk had stationed nearly a third of its armed forces along the entire border with Ukraine and that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops were standing guard at the border.
In the context of a Ukrainian incursion with thousands of troops into Russia that commenced on August 6, Lukashenko, a steadfast ally of Vladimir Putin, was speaking.
“In response to their aggressive policy, we have deployed our military along the entire border and placed them in strategic locations—in the event of a war, they would serve as a defensive line,” Belta quoted Lukashenko as saying in an interview with Russian state television.
The situation on the border with Belarus remained unchanged, according to Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian border service, in an interview with Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda on Sunday.
“We are not seeing an increase in the number of Belarusian units’ equipment or personnel near our border.” Demchenko said.
Lukashenko stated that the Belarusian-Ukrainian border was mined “as never before” and that Ukrainian troops would suffer substantial losses if they attempted to cross it.
