RIGA, Latvia — Russia is gathering thousands of troops in its western neighbor Belarus ahead of what could be the opening of a new front aimed at disrupting the flow of Western military aid from Poland, officials say defense in Latvia and Ukraine.
However, the assembled forces, around 10,000 troops, may still be too weak to pull off another push south from Belarus, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said on Friday.
“We have to be careful, but I doubt that the Russians are capable at this moment of opening another front line against Ukraine, at least not a successful front,” Pabriks said in an interview in Riga, the capital of Latvia, which borders Russia and Belarus.
Belarus’ announcement last week that it was forming a new joint military force with Russia alarmed the West that the Kremlin could prepare a new ground assault with the help of Belarusian forces. Russia massed troops in Belarus ahead of its initial attack on Ukraine in February.
On Thursday, a Ukrainian general, Oleksiy Gromov, said the threat of a possible invasion of Belarus was growing. He said a new attack was unlikely to head towards Kyiv – which is just 60 miles from the border with Belarus – but rather west of the capital, closer to the Polish border. An offensive south of western Belarus into Ukrainian territory near the border with Poland could disrupt the flow of arms to Ukraine from the United States and its allies, much of which goes through Poland.
Russia used the territory of Belarus, its closest military and political ally, as a staging ground for its February invasion and has since launched missiles and drones into Ukraine from there. But President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’ veteran strongman, resisted pressure from Russia to get directly involved in the war.
On Friday, Mr Lukashenko said it would be undesirable for Belarusian military equipment to be used in Ukraine and denied that his country’s troops were training for war, adding “no war today.” We don’t need it,” the state-run Belta news agency reported.
Mr Lukashenko made a similar statement in February, just days before Russia invaded Ukraine from its territory.
On Friday, Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement that if the country were attacked again from Belarus, it “would respond as fiercely as we respond to all occupiers”.
The flurry of military activity in Belarus in recent days, the British Ministry of Defense said on Friday, is “likely an attempt to demonstrate Russian-Belarusian solidarity and convince Ukraine to divert forces to guard the northern border”. .
Noting Mr Lukashenko’s claims that 70,000 Belarusians and 15,000 Russians would be involved in their new joint force, the UK Ministry of Defense said it was unlikely that Russia had actually deployed any significant forces and added that Belarus “maintains a minimum capacity to undertake complex operations”.
Vadym Skibitsky, spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said in an interview that Ukraine also saw no immediate threat of another attack from Belarus.
Several thousand newly mobilized Russian soldiers are deployed in Belarus at training sites, Mr. Skibitsky said, but they are not accompanied by tanks, artillery or tankers and other logistical support they would have needed to invade and confront the seasoned Ukrainian troops.
“We see these elements moving now in Belarus, but we don’t see the movement of equipment,” he said.
Brig. Pentagon spokesman Gen. Patrick S. Ryder also downplayed the likelihood of another Russian invasion from Belarus. “We currently have no indication of potential imminent military action on this front,” he said at a press briefing on Thursday.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.