Global Courant
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (R) at the Grand Kremlin Palace on May 25, 2023 in Moscow, Russia.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko will meet on Sunday, the Kremlin said, two days after Moscow warned that any aggression against its neighbor and closest ally would be regarded as an attack on Russia.
After Poland decided earlier this week to move military units closer to the border with Belarus in response to the arrival of troops from Russia’s Wagner group in Belarus, Putin said Moscow would use all means to respond to any hostility towards Minsk.
The Kremlin said Lukashenko is making a working visit to Russia and will talk with Putin about further developing the countries’ “strategic partnership”.
Although he did not send his own troops to Ukraine, Lukashenko allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has held regular meetings with Putin since then.
The two countries have since held multiple joint military training exercises, and in June Lukashenko allowed his country to be used as a base for Russian nuclear weapons, a move widely condemned by the West.
The perception that Lukashenko, a pariah in the West, depends on Putin for his survival had fueled fears in Kiev that Putin would pressure him to join a new ground offensive and open a new front in the faltering Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday, the Belarusian defense ministry said mercenaries from the Wagner Group had begun training Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few kilometers from the border with NATO member Poland.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Belarus and telling them they would no longer take part in the war in Ukraine for now, but ordered them to gather strength for Wagner’s operations in Africa as they trained the Belarusian army.