Russia And Belarus Keep Threatening To Reinvade Ukraine. It’s A Very Stupid Idea.

Eight months ago Russian forces rolled south from Belarus, crossing the border with Ukraine and widening Russia’s nearly decade-old war on Ukraine.

The Russian battalions coming from Belarus—a country whose long-time autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko enjoys close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin—struck south, aiming for Kyiv just 65 miles away.

They never got there. Strung out along the roads and highways, their supply lines bleeding from relentless attacks by mobile teams of missile-wielding Ukrainian infantry, the Russian formations stalled, collapsed then retreated back into Belarus to regroup before redeploying to the eastern and southern fronts.

Now, around 200 days later, a second Russian force ostensibly is gathering in Belarus. It’s unclear exactly why. But if the plan is for the force to reopen the northern front—well, it’s a pretty dumb one.

Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine were reeling from twin Ukrainian counteroffensives when, on October 7, Lukashenko announced he and Putin had agreed on the deployment of a combined Russian-Belarusian force in “connection with the escalation on the western borders”—an apparent reference to Ukrainian attacks in Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, on Russia’s western border.

But the Belarusian leader “did not clearly define the deployment’s parameters,” the Washington, D.C., Institute for the Study of War noted.

Four days later, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces looked for signs the Russians and Belarusians were forming new combat units. Belarus continued to allow Russia to fly warplanes through Belarusian air space, the general staff reported. But “signs of the formation of offensive groups in the territory of the Republic of Belarus and movement of troops … are not observed.”

ISW later observed Belarus transferring, via trains, weapons and equipment to the hard-hit Russian army at its staging areas in Russia. “Belarusian equipment movements into Russia indicate that Russian and Belarusian forces likely are not establishing assembly areas in Belarus,” ISW explained.

It’s obvious why Russia would want Belarus’ help. The Russian armed forces have lost as many as 100,000 troops wounded and killed in Ukraine since February, while also writing off no fewer than 7,000 tanks, fighting vehicles and other major equipment.

The Russian military is fraying. A desperate nationwide mobilization that began last month, officially aiming to draft 300,000 men, instead is petering out. Many of the draftees are old and unfit. The quality of their equipment “is almost certainly lower than the already poor provision of previously deployed troops,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said.

The Kremlin is sending these unready draftees into Ukraine with just a few days of training. They’re surrendering or dying as fast as they arrive at the front.

But Belarus’s 60,000-person army is no better than Russia’s, even if it is less bloodied. It’s possible Lukashenko isn’t willing to squander, on a losing war, what little combat power his country possesses.

Then there’s the weather. It’s getting wetter in Ukraine as it gets colder. The muddy early winter months are extremely hostile to offensive military operations. It’s not for no reason that wars in Ukraine tend to pause in November and December before resuming after the ground freezes in January. If Belarus deployed troops in Ukraine now, these troops would enjoy just a couple weeks of good weather before getting bogged down.

All those factors led Mike Martin, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London, to a simple conclusion. “The Russians and the Belarusians are posturing on the northern border of Ukraine,” he tweeted.

The Ukrainian army is splitting its brigades between two major counteroffensives while apparently planning for a third. It doesn’t have a lot of good troops to spare. All it takes is a few statements and a couple trainloads of ammunition to create the impression that a Russian-Belarusian attack toward Kyiv is a real threat. That compels the Ukrainians to keep forces in reserve to defend the capital. Forces that can’t join a counteroffensive elsewhere.

“It’s not clear whether they are going to cross the border,” Martin wrote about the ostensible Russian-Belarusian force. “Either way it does tie up Ukrainian troops, and so has a use. That is the military effect that it achieves whether or not they cross the border.”

Russian forces barely are holding on along fronts where they’re already established. Opening another front inevitably would thin out existing formations … and likely hasten their defeat.

For the Russians, signaling a northern attack alongside the Belarusians is smart strategy, inasmuch as it relieves the pressure on Russian battalions. But actually launching a northern attack alongside the Belarusians would be dumb.

That doesn’t mean the Russians won’t try it, Martin mused. “Russia has done some pretty stupid stuff in this war and so you can’t rule it out.”