Minsk seeks to “shake up” its military and get it ready for a potential war, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said
Belarus will bolster its military combat readiness and could even announce “mobilization” to test it, President Alexander Lukashenko has said.
The Belarusian leader made the remarks on Friday when he toured the Obuz-Lesnovsky military training grounds near the city of Baranovichi in the west of the country. During his visit, Lukashenko met top military officials and inspected communications and control systems. The president said that he was set to continue vetting the country’s forces, revealing that an artillery brigade and signal troops are currently undergoing extensive inspections.
“I’ve already put it in plain terms: the army needs a shake-up – the time has come. The entire army. We will vet everyone. Right up to the point of mobilization,” Lukashenko told reporters.
The vetting process is set to be as close to real war conditions as possible, he added. “We are preparing for war so that it does not happen,” the Belarusian leader stated.
Speaking to senior military officials, the president reiterated that Minsk was not seeking to attack anyone but only to bolster its defenses. “We have no intention of attacking anyone; we are pragmatists. We understand that attacking anyone – say, one of our neighbors – would be tantamount to suicide. We cannot win a conflict against the ‘monsters’ – the states situated along our borders,” he said.
While it was not immediately clear which countries exactly Lukashenko described as “monsters,” most of the Belarusian neighbors’ militaries greatly surpass its capabilities. Minsk maintains a modestly sized military of less than 50,000 active-duty servicemen, against some 1.5 million troops in Belarus’ key ally, Russia. Ukraine, which has been locked in a conflict with Russia for over four years, is believed to have around 900,000 active-duty personnel.
Other neighbors of Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are NATO member states. While the two Baltic nations have tiny militaries, Warsaw has been actively building up its force recently. Poland has some 220,000 active-duty troops and continues to expand the force as well as rearm it with modern weaponry. Numbers-wise, the country’s military has become the third-largest within the NATO bloc, surpassed only by the US and Türkiye.
