Belarus is almost certainly not about to join the war on Russia’s side. Western military analysts see no sign of the troop build-up a real invasion would need, and Belarus’s own defense minister, Viktor Khrenin, has said openly that it would make “no sense” for his country to attack a neighbor unprovoked. Ukraine has accused Belarus of hosting relay equipment capable of helping to guide Russian drone strikes, and has threatened to remove it by force if Minsk does not act. JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The more revealing question is why Ukraine now feels strong enough to issue a public ultimatum to a country it spent four years carefully not provoking, just as the United States is warming to the man running it. The row over aiding Russian drone attacks from Belarusian soil is only the visible part of a much bigger story.
Underneath the headlines about retransmitters sits a contest over what Belarus becomes once the war ends, and who gets to decide that. At its core, this is about Ukraine beginning to think beyond the war itself and about its role as a regional security actor in the settlement that follows. Kyiv is increasingly alarmed that others, from Washington to Moscow, are already trying to shape Belarus’s future, while it will be the country left living with the consequences, above all in the form of an exposed northern border if Belarus remains a platform for Russian power.
