Belarusian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries on manoeuvres in 2023 -

Belarus is massing troops and equipment along its border with Ukraine under the guise of military exercises, Kyiv has warned.

Ukrainian officials urged the Kremlin-allied nation not to make “tragic mistakes” and ordered it to withdraw its forces.

The build-up in the Gomel region, near Ukraine’s northern border, is said to include special forces and former Wagner mercenary fighters, along with tanks, artillery, air defence systems and engineering equipment.

Ukrainian government sources told The Telegraph that its intervention was not meant to be seen as a warning of imminent danger at the border.

However, Kyiv’s foreign ministry said in a statement that if Belarus violated its territory, Ukraine would defend itself and “every group of troops, military facility, and military supply route in Belarus will be legitimate targets”.

The warning came during Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk and Russia’s advance into eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said they had intelligence that Belarus was “concentrating a significant number of personnel, including special operations forces, weapons and military equipment” under the cover of military drills.

“We warn Belarusian officials not to make tragic mistakes for their country under Moscow’s pressure, and we urge its armed forces to cease unfriendly actions and withdraw forces away from Ukraine’s state border to a distance greater than the firing range of Belarus’s systems,” they added in a statement.

Belarus, which is politically and economically reliant on Moscow, allowed Russian troops to use its territory as a launchpad for their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said Kyiv “has never taken and is not going to take any unfriendly actions against the Belarusian people”.

They added that military exercises in the region posed a “global security” threat because of their proximity to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Forces ‘ill-equipped’

Last week, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, claimed Ukraine had earlier this month sent more than 120,000 troops to the border between the two nations - a claim denied by Kyiv.

He said that Minsk had deployed nearly a third of its armed forces to the region in response.

Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst at Rochan Consulting, said it was “unlikely Belarus is considering offensive action against Ukraine at this stage”.

He added: “Our long-term assessment is that the Belarusian armed forces primarily function as a mobilisation force, which would require a significant increase in manpower through mobilisation to conduct any offensive operations.

“Even then, their forces primarily rely on post-Soviet equipment that has seen minimal modernisation, leaving them ill-equipped for contemporary battlefield demands.”

Mr Muzyka said Kyiv had heavily fortified parts of its border with Belarus and it was unlikely Minsk could muster the force to break through.

Mathieu Boulegue, a consulting fellow at the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera that Belarus was a vassal state to the Kremlin and more valuable as a launchpad for operations than for it to enter the war itself.

He added: “The moment they do that, it creates much more instability than necessary, with the risk of losing regime stability in Minsk, and forcing a hard international response.”

Russia meanwhile launched its largest drone and missile barrage in weeks, again striking Ukraine’s battered energy grid and triggering more blackouts.

Hundreds of drones and missiles forced state-owned electricity supplier Ukrenergo to announce emergency power cuts to stabilise the system.

Top Kyiv officials again urged their allies and arms suppliers to allow long-range strikes into Russia.

Mr Zelensky also redoubled his call for allies to join the country in shooting down missiles and drones over Ukrainian airspace.

Ukraine had no powerful long-range weapons at the start of the invasion, but has since developed many models of long-range attack drones and used them to hit targets deep inside Russia, ranging from oil refineries to military airfields.

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