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OSIPOVICHI, Belarus — Mocking the US for spending billions on intelligence businesses that he stated had wrongly predicted an assault on Ukraine, the autocratic chief of Belarus, Russia’s western neighbor and closest ally, stated Thursday that joint navy workouts now underway between the nations didn’t presage an invasion — at the least not now.
Western officers have warned that the navy maneuvers, often known as Allied Resolve 2022 and described by NATO as the most important deployment of Russian troops in Belarus for the reason that finish of the Chilly Battle, may function cowl for an assault on Ukraine, which shares an almost 700-mile-long border with Belarus.
“There will probably be no invasion tomorrow,” the Belarusian chief, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, informed reporters after watching artillery and warplanes from Belarus and Russia placed on a loud show of firepower at a desolate navy coaching floor outdoors Osipovichi, a small city southeast of Minsk, the capital. The US and its allies say the Russian menace stays excessive.
Russia didn’t exhibit its most superior warplanes or battle tanks. However Sukhoi fighter bombers and Mi-24 helicopter gunships nonetheless projected energy, streaking over a snow-covered expanse of land now quick turning to mud — removed from preferrred situations for the land assault on Ukraine that American officers have been predicting for weeks.
The joint workouts have attracted shut consideration from the West as a information not solely to Moscow’s intentions in Ukraine but additionally in Belarus, an unbiased state that has more and more fallen below the thumb of the Kremlin because it helped Mr. Lukashenko suppress large avenue protests in 2020 after a contested election.
Requested whether or not among the Russian troops and navy {hardware} deployed in Belarus for the 10-day-long workouts may keep in his nation after the drills finish on Sunday, Mr. Lukashenko stated this might be selected Friday, when he meets President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow.
“If it is smart to maintain Russian troops right here, we are going to preserve them so long as crucial,” Mr. Lukashenko stated in remarks that appeared to contradict an announcement a day earlier by his overseas minister, Vladimir Makei, that “not a single Russian serviceman and never a single piece of Russian navy {hardware} will stay after these maneuvers.”
Mr. Lukashenko, who has dominated Belarus since 1994, stated there was no want for everlasting Russian navy bases in his nation however indicated that Russia may go away behind ammunition and a few navy gear so “as to not drag them and backwards and forwards” every time the 2 nations maintain navy workouts.
The US, he stated, ought to “relax” and admit what he stated have been the errors of the intelligence assessments pointing to an imminent invasion.
“Do you continue to consider that we are going to assault Ukraine from right here? Are you continue to entertaining this loopy concept?” Mr. Lukashenko requested earlier than climbing into his presidential helicopter for a flight again to Minsk.
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