Putin’s Visit Signals Pressure Mounting on Belarus’ Leader

WARSAW, Poland — Under mounting Kremlin pressure to provide more support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus hosts a rare visit by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to his country’s capital Monday.

Lukashenko, Putin’s closest ally, relies on Moscow for finance, fuel and security assistance to maintain his 28-year grip on power. The two men have met at least six times since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February, using Belarus as a staging ground for its abortive assault on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. But those meetings were all outside of Belarus, mostly in Russia.

After months holed up in the Kremlin and his country retreat near Moscow, keeping a distance from Russia’s military and diplomatic setbacks, Putin has in recent weeks sought to project a more hands-on, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns image. His trip Monday to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, follows a visit last week to Kyrgyzstan and a trip Friday to a Russian military command post at an undisclosed location.

As Russia floundered on the battlefield, Lukashenko allowed it to use his territory to launch missiles and bombing runs against Ukraine but has so far resisted pressure from Moscow to send in his own troops. The Belarusian strongman, in remarks reported by the state news agency Belta, insisted that his meeting with Putin on Monday would focus on economic matters, particularly the price of Russian natural gas, on which Belarus is heavily dependent. But he conceded that “of course, we will not avoid” military issues and “we will talk about defense capability and the security of our state.”

The Minsk meeting follows repeated warnings from Ukraine in recent days that Russian forces could be preparing a new offensive from Belarus aimed either at making another effort to seize Kyiv, only around 55 miles from the Belarusian border, or at disrupting the flow of Western arms into Ukraine from Poland.

But most military experts believe that Russia’s military has been so badly battered by nearly 10 months of war that it is no condition to launch a new offensive from Belarus, either with or without the participation of Belarusian troops.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said in a report published Friday that a new Russian thrust into Ukraine was unlikely as “there are still no indicators that Russian forces are forming a strike force in Belarus.”

Defense ministers from Russia and Belarus signed an unspecified agreement earlier this month to strengthen military ties, and last week, Belarus said it was checking the combat readiness of its troops. The last time it did that was just days before Russia invaded Ukraine from its territory.

But the flurry of military activity in Belarus, including the arrival of thousands of Russian troops ostensibly for training, could be part of an elaborate ruse aimed at forcing Ukraine to divert its troops to the north from active fronts in the east and south of the country.

Putin’s meeting with Lukashenko, according to the Institute for the Study of War, “will reinforce the Russian information operation designed to convince Ukrainians and Westerners that Russia may attack Ukraine from Belarus.”

If that is Russia’s aim, it seems to be working, with alarm growing in Ukraine that the Kremlin is pushing Belarus to join a new offensive from the north. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine held a meeting Sunday with his defense and security chiefs where Belarus was “the main issue on the agenda,” his office said in a statement. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “preparing for all possible defense scenarios.” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Zelenskyy, told The New York Times on Sunday that Ukraine is bracing for the possibility that Russia will escalate the war by launching a winter offensive.

A day earlier, Podolyak said on Ukrainian television that Russia is leaning hard on Belarus to join the war directly. That, he added, would be “suicidal” for Lukashenko.

In an unusual public acknowledgment of the view that he is so beholden to Moscow that he can only submit to its demands, Lukashenko on Friday dismissed as untrue talk that “there is no power in Belarus anymore, that the Russians are already running everything” and insisted: “no one, except us, governs Belarus.”