Belarus–Ukraine border

The road to Kyiv

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, its forces advanced from several directions, including from the north, where Ukraine borders both Russia and Belarus. Russian troops moving on Kyiv from that side were defeated in late March. In August 2023 Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, acknowledged that Russian troops had entered Ukraine from Belarusian territory after large-scale exercises there, while insisting that no Belarusian had been involved.^[2]

Belarus has stayed closely tied to Russia since independence in 1991. It evacuated its embassy in Kyiv in March 2022 and has let Russia station troops on its territory, and Western governments have sanctioned it for supporting the war, though it has not itself fought Ukraine.^[1]

“The training ended, Russian troops began to withdraw from the territory of Belarus... They began to leave, and on Feb. 23, 24, part of these troops began to cross the border”^[2]

A watched frontier

In August 2024, after Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Lukashenko said Belarus had moved around a third of its forces to the border and accused Ukraine of massing 120,000 troops there, which Kyiv denied. Ukraine accused Belarus of concentrating soldiers and equipment in the Gomel region, close to the Chornobyl nuclear plant, and warned that any violation of the border would make troops and supply routes in Belarus legitimate targets.^[1]