Tag: Belarus

Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stall

– January 23, 2022

Russia has sent troops more than 4,000 miles to Ukraine’s borders and announced sweeping naval drills as Moscow expands its preparations for a potential attack on Ukraine as negotiations appear at a deadlock.

Six Russian landing ships capable of carrying main battle tanks, troops and other military vehicles travelled through the Channel en route to the Mediterranean last week in a deployment that could bolster an amphibious landing on Ukraine’s southern coast if Vladimir Putin orders an attack. Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed that Russia is hiring mercenaries and supplying its proxy forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with fuel, tanks and self-propelled artillery in preparation for a potential upsurge in fighting.

And a large military force, including Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, elite spetsnaz troops and anti-aircraft batteries, has arrived in Belarus from Russia’s eastern military district, an extraordinary deployment that western officials and analysts say could enable Moscow to threaten Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

The new deployments have worried US officials. “What concerns us is the total picture,” said a senior state department official in a briefing last week. “It is the amassing of 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders combined with moving forces into Belarus over the weekend … these numbers are beyond, of course, what we would expect with regard to a normal exercise.”

The new forces in Belarus, the official added, represent an “increased capability for Russia to launch this attack, increased opportunity, increased avenues, increased routes”.

The US president, Joe Biden, last week said that Putin himself may not know what he plans to do. But the results are either reckless brinkmanship or preparations for a large-scale military operation.

https://www.theguardian.com

Polish Deputy Prime Minister Accuses Germany of Using EU to Create ‘Fourth Reich’

Chris Tomlinson – December 26, 2021

Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the country’s governing ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), has accused Germany of trying to create a “Fourth Reich” by pushing for a European Union federal state.

Mr Kaczyński made his comments this week during an interview with Polish media, explaining that the term “Fourth Reich” was not so much a reference to the Third Reich of National Socialist Germany as to the “First Reich” of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Polish conservative added that if his fellow countrymen were to agree to further federalisation of the European Union “we would be degraded in various ways” and said that such a change to the EU would amount to a “modern subjugation” of the Polish people, Kronen Zeitung reports.

The comments come after the new German left-green-liberal coalition government agreed to push for further federalisation of the European Union as part of the “traffic light coalition” deal that was agreed upon earlier this month.

Last week, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz made his first visit to Poland to meet with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, with the latter noting his opposition to a centralised EU superstate and saying such a move would be “bureaucratic centralism” and adding that “Europe will be strong if it is a Europe of sovereign states.”

Scholz did, however, express support for Poland’s ongoing migrant crisis engineered by Belarus, with Scholz agreeing that it was a form of “hybrid warfare” during his visit.

“I described to the Chancellor the changed tactics that the [Alexander] Lukashenko regime is now using in this artificially triggered migration crisis, the use of people as living shields, as weapons,” Prime Minister Morawiecki said.

https://www.breitbart.com

NATO Increases Military Flights Along Belarus Border As Putin Blames EU For Migrant Crisis

Tyler Durden – November 18, 2021

Previously we noted that despite tiny NATO-member Estonia not actually sharing a border with Belarus, its government ordered snap military drills and the erecting of additional barbed-wire along its border with Russia in a message of solidarity with Poland amid the migrant standoff.

Fresh EU sanctions on Minsk, coupled with persisting clashes at the Belarus-Poland border, mean that things could easily escalate to a military conflict between the two countries, and into a broader NATO-Russia-Belarus standoff, given Moscow is Lukashenko’s closest ally. Alarmingly, on Thursday the Belarusian government cited a noticeable uptick in NATO aircraft activity “along the state border of Belarus”.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry statement was translated by Russian media sources: “Our radio and radar reconnaissance means registered constant increase in the intensity of flights of reconnaissance and combat aviation of NATO member states along the state border of Belarus, including in the airspace of Ukraine,” it said.

More broadly, the defense ministry connected the heightened activity to a threatening NATO build-up at its border – something which was persistently emphasized during last year’s crackdown on anti-Lukashenko protests, for which Minsk was slapped with EU sanctions the first time around (with fresh EU sanctions being readied this week as Lukashenko stands accuses of orchestrating the migrant crisis).

According to further details of the allegation via TASS:

The total number of these flights had doubled recently, while flights by US aircraft increased by 50%, the ministry said. Unmanned surveillance aircraft continue to be used a lot, it said. The aircraft fly as close as 15-20 kilometers from the Belarusian border, according to the statement.

Belarus says the number of NATO flights has “almost doubled” in recent years. “These facts confirm the buildup of military activity near our borders and testify to the further escalation of the situation around Belarus,” the defense ministry said.

https://www.zerohedge.com