(Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that Ukraine had stationed more than 120,000 troops at its border with Belarus and Minsk had deployed nearly a third of its armed forces along the entire border, the Belta state news agency reported.
He did not say exactly how many troops were deployed. Belarus’ professional army has about 48,000 troops and around 12,000 state border troops, according to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance.
“Seeing their aggressive policy, we have introduced there and placed in certain points – in case of war, they would be defence – our military along the entire border,” Belta cited Lukashenko as saying in an interview with Russian state television.
Kyiv did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment. On Saturday Kyiv said it had seen no signs of a Belarusian troop buildup at the border.
The Belarusian leader, a staunch ally of Vladimir Putin, was speaking against the backdrop of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia that began on Aug. 6 when thousands of Kyiv’s troops smashed through Russia’s western border in a major embarrassment for Putin’s top military brass.
Belarusian Defence Minister Viktor Khrenin said on Friday there was a high probability of an armed provocation from neighbouring Ukraine and that the situation at their shared border “remains tense”.
Lukashenko said the Belarusian-Ukrainian border is mined “as never before” and that Ukrainian troops would incur huge losses if they tried to cross it.
(Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Alison Williams and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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