Russia is building up its “biggest deployment” of troops in Belarus since the Cold War amid rising tensions about a potential invasion of Ukraine, Nato has claimed.
Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg expressed his concern on Thursday that Russian troop numbers around Ukraine were beginning to climb and said that the number of personnel in Belarus would likely reach 30,000.
This comes in addition to the estimated 115,000 troops massed on Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Special forces, high-end fighter jets, Iskander short-range ballistic missiles and S-400 ground-to-air missile defense systems were all being dispatched to Russian-ally Belarus, which has a 674 mile border with Ukraine.
“Over the last days, we have seen a significant movement of Russian military forces into Belarus. This is the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War,” Mr Stoltenberg told reporters at the Nato headquarters in Brussels.
“We speak about a wide range of modern military capabilities. All this will be combined with Russia’s annual nuclear forces exercise, expected to take place this month.”
The military movements come as Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu visits Belarus to inspect the preparations for joint drills in the country this month.
Mr Shoigu will also be meeting with Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who last week vowed to go to war for Moscow.
Ukraine’s defence minister said that he hoped that the Russian troop deployment to Belarus would be temporary and that Moscow has amassed 115,000 troops near his country’s border.
Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow at Chatham House, told The Washington Post that if Russia decides to mount an invasion of Ukraine, Belarus could be used as a place to maintain air dominance and conduct strikes into Ukrainian territory.
Yesterday, the United States announced that they would be moving 3,000 troops to Europe in a bid to sure up Nato allies in the region. Russia reacted by calling the move a “destructive step”.
Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said that the US deployment to Germany, Poland and Romania would “increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision”, while delighting the Ukrainian authorities.
He said Ukraine would continue to sabotage the Minsk agreement “with impunity” - a failed agreement that was designed to end a conflict between Kiev and Moscow-backed separatists in the contested Donbas region.
In return, US State department spokesperson Ned Price rebuffed the comments, saying Russia was attempting to turn “reality upside down”.
Referring to the 3,000 US troops, Mr Price said: “These are not permanent moves; they are precisely in response to the current security environment in light of this increasingly threatening behaviour by the Russian Federation.”
The war of words between Russia and the United States comes as Vladimir Putin praised his closeness with Chinese premier Xi Jinping.
Writing in an article published in China’s Xinhua news agency, Mr Putin hailed the “unprecedented level” of the Russia-China “partnership of coordination.”
He described the two countries as “close neighbours bound by centuries-old traditions of friendship and trust”. Mr Putin added that Russia has “plans to implement a number of large-scale joint projects” with China in oil and gas.
