Belarus holding military drills on border with traumatised northern Ukraine | NEWSRUX

Belarus has introduced it is going to be holding army workouts close to the border with Ukraine, in flip placing Ukrainian authorities on excessive alert about the potential of a contemporary wave of assaults.

Formally, Belarusian forces haven’t joined Russia’s so-called “army operation” towards Ukraine. However the authorities did permit the territory for use as a launchpad for Russia to ship 1000’s of troops throughout the border to invade on February 24, and within the weeks that adopted.

Western intelligence has additionally warned Russia may very well be envisaging a renewed push from the north. The town of Chernihiv, 70km from the Belarus border, was besieged by Russian troops for a month in the beginning of the warfare and has seen new artillery assaults in latest days.

Thibaut Bettini, a Belgian volunteer serving to native authorities restore water distribution within the space, informed Euronews he had been informed to go away the area final week.

“I used to be knowledgeable,” he mentioned, “{that a} potential second assault was imminent, and that for my safety, I wanted to return dwelling.”

Bettini spent a complete of three weeks within the north of Ukraine and noticed for himself how native infrastructure had been wrecked by the battle. 

“We noticed pumping stations broken,” he mentioned, “water reservoirs broken, all of the pipe networks broken… The town centre was roughly spared, however the suburbs weren’t.” 

He went on: “The primary few days have been extraordinarily troublesome, particularly the very first day I arrived. We needed to undergo small parallel roads, by way of small villages. And shortly earlier than Chernihiv, possibly 20 or 30 km earlier than Chernihiv there is a village that is known as Kiyenka… There was once. It now not exists. There was once some 300 homes and it was utterly wiped off the map.”

On the bus, he mentioned, troopers informed him to not look out the window. “I ought to have listened to them,” he mentioned, describing “our bodies alongside the highway” and buildings “burned and destroyed”.

Again on the border, Belarus’s embattled president Alexander Lukashenko has ordered the creation of a brand new army command unit for the south of the nation. 

The Belarusian army drills are scheduled to start on June 22. Russia has not mentioned whether or not it’s going to participate within the workouts.