welcome back spare parts Army today we're going to look at how Ukraine gaining territory inside Russia has affected the overall picture of the war and what do the new troop movements near the border between Ukraine and bellarus mean in this video it's my goal to give you an objective overall update on the war with the key information you need to know about what's happening across the entire front line according to Ukraine's top General Alexander siriri he said that the kers operation diverted a significant number of Russia's forces General cersi went on to say that as
of now we can say around 30,000 Russian servicemen have been sent to the curse front and this figure is now growing however there are an estimated 4 to 500,000 Russian soldiers fighting across Ukraine right now so it's still unclear how much of a difference that's going to make along the front line and that's why I want to talk about Russia's offensive actions in the South as well today because I think these two pieces of the war are closely related to each other if we assume for a second that those numbers are accurate though typically attackers
want to have at least a 3 to one advantage to have a chance of repelling a defending Force now most open source estimates that we've seen say that Ukraine has a force strength of between 8 and 10 brigades of up to 15,000 soldiers in KK which means if I'm being honest it's very difficult for us to project what'll happen next here one way of analyzing it though comes from an article in real clear defense written by Adam given who explained a key military concept it's important to understand the battle in KK I think the concept
is called interior and exterior lines interior lines and exterior lines represent the routes through which supplies reinforcements information Communications travel to reach the Frontline troops a defending Force has the benefit of interior lines because they're battling from a single Central position you can see in this example on this map that each friendly unit is closer to each other with interior lines of communication defending forces have that benefit however on the other side the attacking force is using exterior lines which means that they're further apart from one another they're further divided each attacking Force requires a
separate more vulnerable supply line the attacking forces also have to cover more distance in order to concentrate their forces at strategically decisive points this is one of the reasons why being on the offensive is so much more difficult there's more to this of course there's concentric and Ecentric plans to counteract this but it helps explain what we're observing from Ukraine's perspective these shorter Interior Supply lines allow them to have a quicker operational Tempo Adam given points out in his publication that the success of the kers operation from Ukraine's perspective will in part hinge on Ukrainian
forces choosing a defensible central point that can easily Supply the front there currently as of recording this Ukraine's Advance into curse continues they've now taken roughly 1,250 Square km of territory but how was Ukraine even able to pull this surprise attack off more information has come out since then revealing a lot because this shocked many analysts because we're talking about a battlefield here remember where you can't fart without a thermal camera picking you up somewhere to ensure the element of surprise many of Ukraine's officers weren't told about the mission's plans they weren't read into it
until 3 days prior and your rank and file grunts they weren't told until the day of which I can relate to nobody told me anything in the military either prior to the operation while units were killing time waiting inside Ukraine they were instructed to walk around during the day wearing civilian clothing so it's to not direct any too much attention to them now I can hear the keyboard Warriors firing shots at me already in the comments section but it's only a war crime if you wear civilian clothing if you're engaged in hostilities or combat Ukrainian
soldiers were kept secretly inside civilian houses to reduce their visual signature as well now real sneaky beaky stuff here they were disguised to look like they were being rotated off the front lines or to reinforce the Sumi region but why would Russia believe that Ukraine wanted to reinforce sui oh I believe I found the answer to that the chief of the main director of intelligence in Ukraine budanov had quietly laid the groundwork and justification for moving troops there because in mid July he started talking about how he was certain that there was going to be
another Russian attack from KK into tsumi in hindsight I believe he was doing this as a cover story to explain why so many Ukrainian forces were building up in Sumi this made it seem less suspicious to Russian observation the ruse story was that the troops were there to possibly defend against a possible Russian attack in sui which at the time made sense because they had just struck into harke buinov in mid July 2024 said quote let's just say that there are problems and they tend to get worse there is no catastrophe but it's impossible not
to see the problems I've already told someone from the Western press I won't have much good news this year unfortunately if you ask me in hindsight it seems like he was covering for the buildup of forces in sui with what we know now buinov is practically winking at us when he says that he won't have any good news this year from their perspective a New York Times report all but confirms this because they spotted a drone Battalion starting to build up in the sui region starting in July and they also saw the 82nd AER assault
Brigade there it's not that Russia didn't notice all this they did but the leadership didn't believe it was a legitimate threat we talked in the last episode about how the gas meter station in suja might be affected by all this so far Natural Gas Prices rose 5% in Europe after a slight decrease in the transit of gas through here but it hasn't been completely cut off or anything like that the battle continues to develop as we've now been able to assess more details on Russia's ability to respond and reinforce the region so far troops are
being pulled by the Kremlin but they have some issues with actually getting to KK the sayam river is a major waterway that runs along Northern KK over the last two weeks Russian intelligence has reported that as of the 20th of August all three bridges that crossed over the river to the South have now been destroyed cutting off the Russians remaining troops from resupply Ukraine released a series of videos showing their destruction as we've seen in earlier parts of the war wet Gap Crossings are one of the most d ous things you can be forced to
do this cut off resupply or withdrawal routes for thousands of Russian soldiers complicating matters further for a response from Russia's perspective is that they're attempting to evacuate between 100,000 and 200,000 civilian residents in KK or roughly a quarter of the entire region think about it this way that is an enormous amount of people piling onto the highways and clogging up the routes that Russian troops would need to use to arrive a nightmare reverse commute while why so many people for such a relatively small piece of land why are so many people being evacuated because anyone
who is even close to artillery or air strike range need to be evacuated additional pontoon bridges were also hit as they were attempting to Ferry Russian soldiers and Equipment across it's rumored that Ukrainian forces used American jdam airdrop bombs and haar's Rockets with Precision accuracy to Target these Bridges specifically the American produced GBU 39 High Precision bomb was rumored to be deployed so far though the Western made F-16 has not been confirmed to be operated in this direction when we think about how big of a Target we're talking about with these Bridges they're roughly 11
M across and that's pretty much exactly the c or circular error probability or accuracy of an American produced High Mars rocket so it appears like it was a key part of Ukraine's strategy to use the high Mars inside Russian territory now Ukraine is currently in the process of encircling 3,000 Russian troops defending the area all arrows are pointing towards this being an effort to cut off the Russians from resupply and reinforcement so far the current operations by Ukraine have led to hundreds of captured Russian Fighters this has been a major benefit for Ukraine's perspective as
zinski himself said that it was a stocked exchange fund but how many PS have been captured so far that's hard to say but one Ukrainian colonel was quoted as saying as many as 2,000 on August 24th Russia and Ukraine conducted a prisoner swap with 15 15 PS returned on each side this was brokered by a group from the UAE another interesting aspect that has been raised is the fact that now that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are in kers some pro-russian sources have claimed that they're looting and that this is a war crime Military Intelligence analyst
Ryan McBeth and friend of the show had a rundown on this on Twitter according to Ryan he said quote if soldiers come upon enemy military supplies they are 100% allowed to use those supplies as Spoils of War however civilian supplies regardless whether they are food or fuel must be paid for or receipts must be left this information is coming from the Geneva Convention that Ryan pointed out there this is a textbook combined arms offensive action special reconnaissance troops of the Ukrainian forces pushed in first ahead of time before the invasion they used electronic warfare and
counter measures to jam drones and communication signals it's really interesting to me that we observed a lot of light armor like Humvees M wraps and Strikers we did a full rundown on the striker in Ukraine if you want to check out that video but I was in an American Striker unit in the US Army and Iraq and there's some reasons why I think you might want to use a striker instead of a Russian BTR 80 or BTR 90 the striker has a Hightech thermal image remote weapon station for instance that's huge because it gives you
the ability to do surveillance and not just pew pew pew it has added ceramic armor tiles around it which were put to good use recently in some cases we witnessed it was able to deflect an RPG round inside Russia likely because it hit the armor on a slope but it's still impressive that the crew survived and everyone in the vehicle walked away from it another good reason to run with the striker is its 50 caliber machine gun has more ammo compared to a 30 mm that's often seen on the btrs a Ukrainian infantryman who participated
in the offensive in Kirch he was interviewed and he gave some new information his name is ker he said that his experiences on the vehicle is that the btrs cannot stop rifle rounds even so the striker has has more survivability and people are left alive even if it's disabled there's also obviously the Optics meaning not the literal Optics on the vehicle but the politics of it meaning Ukraine may have purposefully wanted the visual image of American provided weapons inside Russia the Russian mil Bogger two majors on his telegram Channel said that these reconnaissance special forces
units were acting autonomously inside K penetrating their populated areas in between their combat formations taking advantage of their mixed forces meaning that there's conscripts and there's paramilitary which do not have established Communications with each other the enemy performs a raid makes noise and then continues to push the flank or move back to the rear to that point military analyst in front of the Show Preston Stewart found some interesting footage of Russia using new types of electronic Jammers now which have become more common on the battlefield this year another piece of evidence suggesting Ukraine's intentions that's
developed since the start of this is that they really want to hold territory because whenever Russia for instance captures territory in Ukraine they find a governor to administer the civil services for the civilians who are there Ukraine has done the same thing by appointing a military commander and an administrator in kers specifically to quote them they said to maintain Law and Order ensure the priority needs of the local population end quote from an American Media perspective I can tell you a lot of what I'm hearing here in the states is that there's questions about whether
or not the US government knew about this attack and if they did to what degree did they support it or not videos have since gone viral of ukrainians tearing down Russian Flags posting up pictures of them near recruiting billboards with American flags suggesting that American volunteers are there the British Challenger 2 main battle tank was observed operating inside Russia man fellas is it gay to like 120 mm Cannon because British tanks just make me feel it kind of way the official reports from the White House is that they were not aware and were not formed
of the plans John Kirby US National Security Council spokesperson and my personal longtime Crush confirmed assessments from Ukraine saying quote if Putin doesn't like it if it's making him a little uncomfortable then there's an easy solution you can just get the hell out of a Ukraine and call it a day end quote I could speculate on whether or not it's true about whether the US government knew about this attack but it would just be speculation one factor that could provide evidence supporting either case really is that the recent approval of using High Mar strikes inside
Russia personally I don't know if Ukraine would have chosen to do the attack or not if they hadn't been given that approval we've seen how the American provided haar's rockets inside Russian territory have been a vital part of this operation to make it happen as seamlessly as it has however you could also make the case that the only reason there was approval was granted for those High Mars inside Russian territory is because back in May 2024 Russia chose to open a new front in harke invading again there so in a way all of these escalations
are connected one thing has in turn led to another personally I think once that option was given I think Ukraine saw an opportunity in an opening that didn't exist a few months prior where does the war go from here there are still several more steps on the escalation ladder we're not quite at the roof yet the next obvious change to look for would be the US government could approve attack of missiles for launch on Military targets inside Russia currently Ukraine is still fighting with their hands tied behind their back to some extent when it comes
to some Us weapons and their restrictions the isw map here shows that 84% of Russian territory near the front lines has Sanctuary or Safe Haven from Attack due to these restrictions if attacks were approved 230 of 250 known military and paramilitary bases would then be within range of targeting including key air bases and headquarters for what it's worth though on the other side of the argument it's interesting to hear what we're hearing out of White House is the Wall Street Journal reported on August 27th 2024 that since Ukraine started receiving more longrange attack of missiles
Russia since moved 90% of their military aircraft out of the range of any potential ballistic missile strike this is according to a US intelligence agent speaking anonymously to the Wall Street Journal The Source claims that this means approving attacks would have little strategic value for Ukraine anymore so those are two conflicting reports the isw thinks that it would make a big difference and Anonymous intelligence officials are saying it wouldn't this could mean though that Russia's anticipating approval of attacks being used or approved or it could have something to do with the fact that Ukraine just
successfully tested their first domestic ballistic missile which would have no restrictions on its use personally I believe the US government is using this as a piece of Leverage if Russia were for example to start advancing quickly on their offensive operations in the East the us could remove the restrictions on attack hims in that case but once they choose to let the genie out of the bottle so to speak they can't put it back in so that's one move that they're going to wait I believe until they have a reason to approve those missiles so far
Russia has yet to be able to fight from a well prepared defensive position in KK Russia currently is attempting to rapidly build defensive line something that Russia's actually very good at building defensive fortifications quickly is one of Russia's fores they're offering anyone with a shovel $4,000 a month to dig trenches in K just to dig holes what's the catch I'll do it Russia has successfully ambushed Ukrainian troops in KK where they can they've also called in a large number of Glide bomb air strikes they've succeeded inflicting casualties on Ukraine but it's not enough yet to
stop the assault or repel it Ukraine has used a combination of deep operations and strategy called exploiting the seams deep operations is where you probe attacks along the front and you look for weak points but to get a better idea of how these two things led to Ukraine success I brought on former US Army Captain Justin Taylor to to help explain it exploiting the scene might sound like a hardcore band that your high school dropout friend plays Bas in but it's actually a really creative way of attacking and organized defense if you can pull it
off if you have a company of conscripts here and another company of conscripts here it's pretty obvious that whatever is directly in front of them is their responsibility to fight but it's in the middle the seam if you will that stuff skirts to get a little fuzzy see keeping the center part defended requires a lot of Communications on both sides at multiple levels so if that's not happening it's going to be really hard for people to figure out who needs to be shooting where and when ensuring that you have direct Fire Control measures on the
ground and easily identifiable or making sure that fire teams and machine gun teams have overlapping sectors of fire so that there's no uncovered Dead Space it's going to be pretty easy to exploit that check out Justin's YouTube channel if you get a chance he's always great Link in the description so this kind of tactic was used back during the harke offensive but despite the success that Ukraine's experiencing in K the Russian offensive in po Roos continues to push forward I see a lot of Publications where they only talk about one side of the war they
only give you one part that you want to hear whether you're Pro Russian or Pro Ukrainian my bias aside I take this seriously and I try my best to give you the objective information that I know you'll find valuable and interesting right now I think we have a case of dueling front lines here so far Russian troops are currently only six miles outside the proper city of prros why is everyone saying this is a strategically important town to Ukraine t Rami UA a former Ukrainian officer on X wrote an amazing assessment on the battle here
with great maps that I really recommend I put a link in the description you should follow him tarami is pro Ukrainian but he gives his honest rundowns even when they paint a bad picture for Ukraine I'm paraphrasing here but he says currently there are only two places in the dumb boss that serve a vital Logistics Hub poke Ro and kator tarami points out that Russia doesn't necessarily even need to capture the whole t in order to gain control of the important Railway here just by being within artillery range they can effectively shut that train operation
down and as you can see the train line routes all the way back to Western Ukraine to keev which then extends to Poland which is where all the American Aid and weapons are coming from so if that gets shut down how do you resupply this area with ammo and new weapons he says quote the potential loss of prros poses a serious oper ational threat to the logistics of the entire region disrupting supply lines from voldar in the South to horka in the north so what all this means I think is that if the town were
to fall even if it doesn't at this point it's bad news for the rest of the front line for Ukraine and I'm looking along the front here I personally don't know exactly where Ukraine would be able to fall back a from a naturally defensive Geographic position and B where is there a highway that runs east to west here that they could resupply them if you have some ideas please let me know in the comments and that's not me fishing for engagement I actually am curious to know if you're seeing something I'm not but one thing
that but one thing to keep in mind that we talked about at the beginning of the video is that as a military force withdraws their interior lines of communication give them a benefit and their defensive potential becomes stronger tagami goes on to say that this doesn't necessarily mean that poke roofs will definitely fall to Russia but just that the likelihood is increasing he also points out people think that potentially because the Rainy season's coming it's going to slow the Russian offensive down but he says that that won't necessarily happen his evidence is that last year
it didn't what we do know is that on the 22nd of August Ukrainian commanders and poke Roos began pulling back from their defensive positions in the Southeast closer to the city itself as they were at risk of encirclement as of this week September 6th the latest news from the front is that Russian forces have been stalled along the front line in Pro Ros for the last week is is based on satellite images and geolocated footage according to open-source intelligence reports this is happening because Ukraine decided to commit their Reserve forces that they've been holding in
the rear roughly 10,000 soldiers have now been committed to counter the attack in poke Ros this is coming from both Pro Ukrainian and pro-russian sources Russian Mill bloggers have been expecting a Counterattack in this direction for some time then on September 8th Russia reported making territorial gains so there's a lot of back and forth here but all this means to me is that any full assessment at this point is going to likely be premature it's too early for anyone to say the full effect of the K operation and it's too early to tell what will
happen in poke Roos but there's another part of the front line that's very important that gets almost no attention belarus's massing tanks Special Forces regular Grunts and even Vagner mercenaries to the border with Ukraine in its greatest concentration since the invasion of 2022 is it time for me to sound the alarmist alarm or will the doctrine of nothing ever happens Prevail once again fears of a wider conflict as the president of bellarus is now sending troops to the Ukrainian border Minsk is claiming to have deployed nearly a third of its Armed Forces meanwhile on the
other hand the leader bellarus lucenko claims Ukraine has massed 120,000 troops on his border it's one of those he said she said kind of War situations in response the Ukrainian foreign Ministry released the statement saying it has quote never taken and is not going to take any unfriendly action against the belarusan people to give us an idea of the tone on the border right now I found this clip of a Ukrainian Soldier stationed there he appears to give us the universal signal for don't come this way why is bellarus executing these troop movements are we
witnessing the start of a new escalation this is the hamell region where bellarus and president Alexander lucenko is massing his forces currently it's what prompted the Ukrainian government to issue a rare and direct statement that reads as follows Ukraine urges the Armed Forces of bellus to withdraw forces away from Ukraine state border to a distance greater than the firing range of belarusan systems according to Conrad musaka director of the Roan consulting firm who's an expert in Russia and bellarus he said quote while many aspects of this year's drills are similar to those in 2023 the
concentration area has notably shifted the deployment of forces into h oblast which served as a staging area for Russian troops during the 2022 attack on keev is particularly concerning he goes on to say that Ukraine has heavily mined this entire area since then and he believes it would require a much larger Force to attack although he did note it was possible that belus could try to seize small sections of territory in a kind of incursion according to data from Ukrainian intelligence agencies the belarusan armed forces are moving tanks artillery multiple launch rocket systems air defense
systems and even engineering equipment near Ukraine's northern border according to them this is all being done under the guise of training exercises something that we've seen before Lucas shenko started complaining about Ukrainian activity here the same week as the incursion into K the kerfuffle in K started on August 6th on August 10th Lucas shenko reported that a dozen Ukrainian drones had violated his airspace and were shot down that's why I think there's some kind of con connection between the KK fuffle and these new troop movements because this is when Lucas shenko first made the order
to move additional forces of his to the border so I think the timing of this move is very telling the curs incursion likely put pressure on bellus because they're a member of the Russian Le collective security Treaty Organization CST and they needed to show some kind of solidarity there are different plausible reasons for why bellus is doing this though one of the things I find interesting about Foreign Affairs international relations and War in general is that we don't know for certain even the world's top intelligence agencies whose job it is to know for certain do
not know for certain but we can make good educated guesses based on motivations incentives and other evidence one of the possible motivations for this move is that it could put more pressure on Ukrainian forces to reinforce that direction which pulls troops away from other parts of the front line as we'll see so how serious is this threat for intelligence insights a pro Ukrainian source that closely follows these developments released their own analysis on the current state of the belarusan Armed Forces the key findings I think are that bellus combat units are usually manned at only
30 to 40% capacity so they would rely heavily on mobilization to fully staff up they claim this doesn't mean an attack couldn't happen here it just indicates to us the potential scale of a strike that would likely be limited Belarus has an active duty Army of roughly 60,000 Personnel so a third of those forces do a little bit of average infantryman math in the back of a napkin that would mean that as many as around 20,000 soldiers were moved to the Border something I've noticed over the past few months is reports of both Ukrainian and
Russian troop buildups in this region there have been rumors of Russian potentially doing another preparing for another assault on keev for over a year now that I've seen since 2023 there's been believed to be roughly 10,000 Russian soldiers remaining in bellarus from a strategic standpoint by Russia and bellarus Pres presenting a possible threat of conflict it might Force Ukraine to keep thousands of their own soldiers tied up in the north instead of helping stabilize the front lines in the south after repelling the northern thrust of the invasion in April 2022 the ukrainians assumed a defensive
posture and throughout 2023 they transformed this border region into a heavily fortified Zone they went to the trouble of shipping wood and materials from elsewhere in order to avoid cutting down the remaining local trees that already were providing cover and conceal for soldiers they built several bunkers each with a Labyrinth of small hallways connecting bedrooms bathrooms kitchens a dining hall and reinforced command rooms according to military analysis we're talking about a multi-layer defense system incorporating obstacles checkpoints and enough anti-tank capabilities to make any wouldbe Invader probably think twice Ukraine has sent additional forces in this
direction to work on these defensive outposts however no official troop numbers or Force disposition have ever been released by keev but open open source intelligence has hinted at forces deployed strategically to cover this border region they ensure a mix of infantry mechanized Vehicles air support across the different regions but again this comes at a cost to having those assets elsewhere along the front and it's a disadvantage from Ukraine's point of view because Russia doesn't need to tie up more than a few couple thousand troops in Belarus all of this is slightly concerning given the close
proximity of the battlefield to Chernobyl nuclear site let's start by examining the Belarus Ukraine border itself we're looking at approximately 674 M or 1,84 km of shared border which stretches approximately from the Western bug River To The nepro River it's close proximity to the irradiated remains of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster the border with bellarus is strategically important because it's straddled by several key roads that lead to Ukraine's Capital City ke during the initial invasion in 2022 you might remember that the Border proved that strategic value Russian forces used it as a launching pad for
their push towards ke which ultimately they withdrew from but they exploited that flat terrain that characterized much of the region because only 50 Mi separates the border to the city of ke it's a distance that we know can be quickly covered by mechanized forces under the right conditions this proximity Is Why any significant troop movements on the belarusan side makes the residents of keev less than comfortable there's likely at least an infantry division and two mechanized brigades composed of armored vehicles on this quiet section of the front getting assigned or rotated through a unit that's
on the the northern border here probably a dream assignment in Ukraine you might as well be in an entirely different world compared to other parts of the front line the border is also important to both sides because it's frequently used as ground for prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine they just recently returned 115 PWS each and then it was back to business as usual before the war this border was a highly active Point Crossings of Bellar rusans and ukrainians over the Neer River they frequently cross to buy groceries visit relatives and have an otherwise peaceful
life since Russian forces withdrew from the northern part of Ukraine there's been a tense calm with periodic reports of Belarusian forces conducting Patrols in the words of a Ukrainian state border Service Officer much has changed since the spring of 2022 though he says quote on the other side we periodically observe border guards of the Republic of bellarus who carry out patrols using boats and foot patrols we also observe their fortifications not on the same scale as we have when they see that we see them they try to disappear from view both sides have largely avoided
direct confrontation until February 2024 when belarusan defense minister claimed that Ukraine had supposedly deployed a military formation of 112 to 114,000 soldiers on the border with Belarus a month later mins began military inspections and Readiness assignments to the region bordering Ukraine Lithuania Poland in April which naturally alarmed its neighbors many thought that after strong reactions from the affected NATO members things would go back to the tense predictable calm that they enjoyed over 20 23 however on June 10th mince began unannounced extended exercises along the Ukrainian border which lasted until July to justify this the Belarusian
president started to announce that several Ukrainian drones which crossed into his airspace were intercepted by the country's air defenses along with other accusations that couldn't be corroborated by International media lucenko started shifting course with gestures that some observers interpreted as efforts to ease tensions with the West after being hit with sanctions like freeing political prisoners and introducing a 90-day Visa free regime for citizens of 35 European countries and as Russia was making steady gains on Ukraine's Eastern front he stated that conditions are ripe to start Russia Ukraine peace talks under the terms discussed in Turkey
in early weeks of the war however when Ukraine made its surprise August 6th incursion into Russia's territory the table seemed to turn and both lucenko and Putin walk back their statements saying conditions were no longer suitable for peace disc discussions a week later we learned from The Institute of the study of war that belarusan Railway workers revealed that an order had been given to stop directing trains from all belarusan Railway stations to stations along the kers branch of the Moscow Railway starting on August 12th due to large scale operation transfer of troops in the direction
of kco Bloss and the movement of freight trains for military logistical purposes 3 days later on August 15th Reuters reported quote lucenko suggested without providing evidence that ke could have designs on attacking Belarus and said that Minsk would not allow Ukrainian troops to trample on our country and here is where things start to get weird if they weren't already weird 3 days later on the 18th Chris York from the KE independent quoted the same Russian TV show which is the equivalent of like Russian 60 minutes where lucenko said that it had all been a misunderstanding
that started when Ukraine misinterpreted the preparations of belarus's Independence Day Celebrations a week later the leader of belus congratulated Ukraine on kev's Independence Day saying that today's contradictions should not destroy long-term neighborly ties Foreign Affairs feels more like a bipolar Affairs sometimes on the 25th of August the Ukrainian government released another statement that said quote we warn that in case of a violation of Ukraine state border by Belarus our state will take all necessary measures to exercise the right to self-defense guaranteed by the UN Charter the foreign Ministry said consequently all troop concentrations military facilities
and supply routes in bellarus will become legitimate targets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in short Ukraine has issued a warning to bellarus stating that any violation of its borders will make military Assets in bellarus a legitimate Target and of course the internet went crazy they went cray they were whiling with a post on X by Roman charma chairman of the Ukrainian American house it shows a map of up to 17 legitimate targets that Ukraine would be legally allowed to strike within belus but the question remains will these defenses be enough if Belarus decides to
join the frey more actively well according to vitelli buano head of the zitur moast military Administration near the border he says it's well protected particularly by fortifications and heavily mined whereas some sections of the front line were apparently not as well completed in the south in time the fortifications in the north appear to be easier to build why because they're not under constant artillery fire in the north it's quiet up there so it allows for engineering equipment to build up defenses so theoretically the fortifications in the north might be better protected according to Bueno the
fortification work is 99% complete saying quote in some places the workers are correcting their mistakes in certain locations we are conducting an examination to check the quality of the fortifications so is Ukraine expecting imminent hostility and escalation an opening of a new front here the answer according to Pavo rad an analyst at the Wilson Center is maybe not he believes that bellus troop movements on the Ukrainian border are part of a larger geopolitical strategy aimed at improving mins geopolitical maneuverability which underscores mint's struggle to balance between its relationships with Moscow and its own interests there
are other players on the table that we haven't even yet discussed bellarus is landlocked and shares its border with five other countries and this is just my personal thoughts here but I think from their perspective it may be a bad idea to be at odds with all of your neighbors just to please one of them Belarus has Poland in the west Lithuania in the Northwest lvia and the Russian Federation in the North and the Russian Federation also in the Northeast and last but not least Ukraine in the South and even my grunt brain can realize
that sealing the borders to the country that provides you with essential Goods food and Technology isn't very smart which puts lucenko in a bit of a pickle because he needs to ensure his own interests well at the same time not rubbing Putin the wrong way as he's dependent on him for AI but perhaps this calculation could change thanks to a new Suitor one that could help him become less reliant on Russia and that's China for all the things I've said about China president XI I do have to admit compared to Putin he's got a beautiful
full head of hair he's taller than Putin he's also woing lcas shenko into making Belarus a core member of its belt and Road initiative lucenko met with the People's Republic of China Premier in Minsk discussing Chinese technology Imports to bellus and to join investment projects this meeting suggests lucenko is trying to diversify belarus's International relationships potentially seeking to reduce dependence on Russia bellarus recent diplomatic activities include meetings with Chinese officials and visits to countries like Venezuela and Cuba suggesting that lucenko is trying to navigate a complex International landscape trying to help Russia circumvent sanctions and
support moscow's military Adventure while at the same time building Plan B so he is spinning a bunch of plates right now however ever that's easier said than done the independent policy Think Tank chadam house has the following to say about this the Kremlin has penetrated the belarusan state so profoundly that its control is likely to persist even after lucenko and Putin are gone so what's the likely outcome of all this is bellarus actually going to enter the conflict more actively or is this all just an elaborate show of force based on the available information seems
more likely that lucenko is engaged in playing all sides rather than preparing an imminent military action that's not for definite though the discrepancies between bellarus and claims of troop deployments and Ukrainian observations suggest that much of this information might just be informational Warfare rather than actual military preparations however we can't completely rule out the possibility of Belarus becoming involved in the conflict the situation remains volatile and a miscalculation by any party could lead to more escalation while the threat of a new front opening up with Belarus is real it's not inevitable the actions of Lucas
shenko in the coming weeks and months will be crucial in determining whether this border tension escalates into an open conflict or remains a war of nerves so what do you think do you think the new front will begin or is it all smok and mirrors if you found this analysis valuable please hit the like And subscribe button for more indepth coverage of military and geopolitical topics join us on our Discord server and our subreddit where we've got thousands of members discussing these topics daily and follow me on Instagram NX Cappy Army Link in the description
to stay up to to date on our latest videos and a little bit more of a personal touch I'm your average infan Chris Cappy signing off
