Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko (R) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, May 25, 2023.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko will meet on Sunday, the Kremlin said, two days after Moscow warned that any aggression against its neighbor and staunchest ally would be considered an attack on Russia.
Poland decided earlier this week to move its military forces closer to the Belarusian border in response to the arrival of troops from Russia’s Wagner Group in Belarus. Putin said Moscow would use all means to respond to any hostility towards Minsk.
The Kremlin said Lukashenko was on a working visit to Russia and would discuss with Putin the further development of a “strategic partnership” between the two countries.
Although Lukashenko did not send his own troops to Ukraine, he allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and has met with Putin frequently since then.
The two countries have since held numerous joint military training exercises, and in June Lukashenko allowed Russia to use it as a nuclear weapons base, a move widely condemned by the West.
The perception that Lukashenko is a Western pariah dependent on Putin for his survival has fueled fears in Kiev that Putin will force him to join a new ground offensive and open a new front in Russia’s faltering Ukrainian invasion.
On Thursday, the Belarusian Ministry of Defense said Wagner Group mercenaries had begun training Belarusian special forces at a military firing range just a few miles from the border with NATO member Poland.
Wagnerian leader Yevgeny Prigozhin welcomed his fighters to Belarus in a video on Wednesday, telling them to hold off further involvement in the Ukraine war for now, but ordering them to build up strength for Wagner’s operations in Africa while training Belarusian troops.