KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus’ exiled opposition leader visited Kyiv on Monday as the Ukrainian capital cleaned up after Russia’s biggest missile attack of the year, and world leaders kept a close eye on how much support the Belarusian government is ready to provide for Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.Russia and its ally Belarus held joint nuclear drills last week, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has increasingly warned in recent days that Belarus could provide a launchpad for Russia to open a new front in northern Ukraine. Some Russian troops entered Ukraine from Belarusian territory in Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.In a further sign that concerns about any Belarusian role are increasing, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke by phone with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday about the war in Ukraine, their first call since the invasion began.
With that conflict more than four years old, the Russian army is locked in a hard and costly slog on the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line that mostly snakes through eastern and southern Ukraine. “Russia hit a dead-end on the battlefield, so it terrorizes Ukraine with deliberate strikes on city centers,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said in a post on X, in the wake of the weekend barrage that killed two people and damaged buildings across the Ukrainian capital.With American-made air defense missiles in short supply because of the Iran war, Russian missiles are harder for Ukraine to stop. Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to stop the fighting made little progress and have now stalled.
