Why should Lukashenko fear a Belarusian invasion?

• In Belarus, preparations for mobilisation are being observed: perhaps the regime actually anticipates external aggression and is preparing to repel it;
• No more than 3-7% would support the participation of the Belarusian army in the war;
• The "Russian world" de facto became the ideological base of the regime, which launched repressions along ethnic lines;
• Belarusians respond to this with solidarity from abroad, volunteering and participating in the war on the side of Ukraine;
• An order about invasion will be a destabilising factor for the Lukashenko regime;
• His opponents inside and outside of Belarus are waiting for this moment: the society is ready to accept Lukashenko's forced offset from power and democratic forces are developing plans for an armed uprising;
• The army of Belarus does not want to fight against the motivated and trained Armed Forces of Ukraine - many soldiers will defect to the side of Ukraine.

• War

The territory of Belarus has been used, with the permission of Lukashenko, from the first day of Russian aggression against Ukraine. In February, it was from the territory of Belarus that Russian troops headed for Kyiv. Russian missiles still are being launched from there, and its airspace is being used to launch missiles from aircraft.

At the same time, the Armed Forces of Belarus have not yet taken a direct part in the invasion, and the societies of both countries, until recently, were confident that the danger of a direct conflict had passed.

In recent weeks, however, the topic of the Belarusian army entering into the war again has come to the forefront. Self-proclaimed President Alexander Lukashenko makes statements about the formation of a "union group of troops", it is not clear whether the country has announced or not a counter-terrorist operation regime, independent media report that "a fundamental decision on covert mobilization has already been made."

Panic is growing in Belarus itself. The distribution of conscription notes, calls for military training, "retraining" are perceived by the population as allusions to mobilisation.

Information appears in the media about the requirements for businesses to provide lists of employees able for military service. Government authorities are preparing bomb shelters. Army deferments are being cancelled for students studying at foreign universities, and travel abroad is being limited for military, law enforcement and rescue workers. At the same time, the Lukashenko’s regime has not officially announced the start of the mobilisation campaign, but announced a large-scale reconciliation of military records.

What awaits Alexander Lukashenko if he decides to issue an invasion order?

• Society

There is no need to create illusions – anti-Russian sentiments in Belarus are not comparable with Ukrainian ones.

Most of the population still has a good attitude towards the Russian Federation. The Russian media dominate the information field, physically purged of independent media, and the regime propaganda repeats Russian narratives.

About a third of Belarusians support the military operations of Russian troops in Ukraine. At the same time, even zealous fans of Russia would not want the Belarusian army to fight in Ukraine: according to various polls, there are from three to seven percent of people ready to support an invasion from Belarus. This means that in the Belarusian society split after the attempted revolution in 2020, there is a consensus on participation in the war: Belarus should stay as far away from it as possible.

The Lukashenko regime senses these sentiments, so even the current assistance to Russia is not advertised by propaganda, and Lukashenko himself is forced to make conciliatory speeches - as a result, in the middle of spring, almost half of Belarusians did not think (or did not even know) that Belarus was taking part in the war.

Fear of losing power and lack of confidence as a result prevents Lukashenko from going sharply against the public consensus in a situation where any manifestations of discontent have to be bludgeoned, and even economic problems are solved by "forceful" methods. That is why there is no certainty and consistency in the statements of Belarusian officials.

Moreover, a scenario is increasingly being discussed generally and in the media, in which the authorities may announce mobilisation, not for an attack on Ukraine, but rather to protect the regime from an attack by NATO, Ukraine or Belarusian volunteers, which they sincerely believe is highly probable.

• Suppression

The protests that frightened the authorities so much led to a policy called "sometimes not up to a law", which was established after Lukashenko's statement at the peak of the demonstrations. 

However, the purges and suppression of dissent did not lead to the cooling of passions sought after by the authorities. On the contrary, due to the ongoing repression, the Belarusian society is still mentally back in 2020, having failed to return to its usual "pre-election" life.

The fear of a repeat of these protests led to attempts to establish total control over all spheres of life, including the economy, culture, religion and education.

Just recently in October, Belarus introduced criminal punishment for raising prices, arresting 20 people, and already managed to cancel it, demanded to ban the movement of labour, took away the Red Church from the parishioners - one of the symbols of Minsk and Belarusian Catholicism, cancelled the accreditation of most private schools - 90% of students already transferred to the state, and also issued a dozen Stalinist sentences of up to 25 years to the next political prisoners, whose number is already measured in thousands, and whose conditions of detention are compared with concentration camps.

The scale of political repression in Belarus is so extreme also because the regime faces an additional unique task - the suppression of the national consciousness that has grown after the protests and contradicts Lukashenko's Russian-centric policies.

Lukashism, a term that has been common in Belarus since the 90s, has always relied on Soviet and Russian narratives, ignoring and demonstratively distancing itself from Belarusianness.

After 2020, the Belarusian regime has significantly tightened its approach to the national question: forced Russification is taking place with the installation already of  ​​​​Russian values, and not Soviet ones.

As a result, regime propagandists praise Muravyov (the Russian governor-general, appointed by the imperial authorities to destroy everything Belarusian), who suppressed the uprising of Kalinoŭski (after whom the very volunteer regiment is named), the country has opened a hunt for guides leading excursions in Belarusian [language] or drifting from Russian historiography, Lukashenko meets with Dugin, and the Belarusian literature store has been closed on its opening day, the owner being arrested. In the year cynically proclaimed "the year of historical memory", the regime began mass destruction of it - including physical destruction, for example, by regularly bulldozing the graves of soldiers of the Polish Home Army [Armia Krajowa].

Public expression of pro-Ukrainian and anti-war views is also pointedly punished. Thus, anti-war protests in Belarus began to be brutally suppressed already in the first days of the war.

According to human rights activists, on 27 and 28 February, 2022, more than 1,100 people were detained in Belarus, who went out to protest, including against the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.

A resident of Bobruisk, who left blue-and-yellow lamps near the monument to the victims of repression, was implicated by fingerprints, and a street musician is being prosecuted for performing a song by Okean Elzy [Ukrainian rock band - ed.] in the centre of Minsk.

Lukashenko's security forces are detaining relatives of the soldiers of the Kastuś Kalinoŭski regiment, who are now fighting on the side of Ukraine.

In conditions when Russian imperialism has become the dominant element of the state ideology of Belarus, it is not surprising that any support for Ukraine is perceived and punished in proportion to a direct protest against the regime, because it implies the right of Belarusians and Ukrainians to self-determination independent of Russia.

• Support

Belarusians find opportunities to help Ukraine even under such conditions. In Ukraine, more than a thousand Belarusians fight in the Kastuś Kalinoŭski regiment, the Pahonia regiment and apart from the international units. In turn, the Belarusian authorities take actions against their relatives and potential volunteers.

Belarusian diasporas in Europe, Canada, the USA regularly take part in fundraising for humanitarian aid, trucks and equipment for the army and doctors.

Opposition forces also participate in the collections: the office of Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya handed over medical aid to the Kalinoŭski regiment, and the main BySol charitable foundation collected more than 300 thousand euros for equipment and humanitarian aid. Many Belarusians are engaged in volunteer activities in Ukraine.

Such assistance from inside of Belarus is almost impossible: the state monitors bank transactions and hunts down those who transfer money to help the Ukrainian army.

Even volunteers who organised a holiday in Gomel for the children of Ukrainian refugees were arrested.

The notorious "rail war" of the first months of the war angered Lukashenko so much that the death penalty was introduced for "attempted terrorist attacks", that is, only for intention, and the partisans who managed to be caught were shot in the knees during detention - later they received sentences of up to 16 years.

So resistance takes other forms. Belaruski Hajun by activist Anton Motolko has been the most famous "partisan" project. Anton is accused in Belarus, like Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, under the article "Act of Terrorism".

Hajun monitors the movement of armed forces and other military activity in Belarus through a decentralised network of activists throughout the country, and already has more than 500,000 subscribers on Telegram: this source is often referred to by the Ukrainian media when they report on the movement and activity of Russian troops on territory of Belarus.

• Army

The Belarusian society does not want to fight, but what about the army?

The structure of the Belarusian army differs from the Russian one (the latter has more "professional soldiers" than "conscripts"). According to various sources, there are about ten thousand professional soldiers in the Belarusian army, most of them are soldiers of special operations forces (former airborne troops). The rest of the troops are recruited mainly with  conscription - they are the flesh of the Belarusian society.

Knowing that no more than 7% of Belarusians believe that Belarus should send troops to Ukraine, it is possible to assume a mood amongst the troops of the Republic of Belarus.

Even if we allow for the fact that brainwashing is carried out in military units, which has a chance to fall on favourable pro-Russian soil in the minds of many conscripts, and access to information is limited, the number of supporters of the invasion will not exceed 30%.

The idea of ​​an invasion remains unpopular. In military units with less strict discipline, and information control in particular, the situation will be more similar to the picture in society as a whole.

These conclusions are confirmed by insiders from the army itself, which come to the media and analysts - soldiers and officers are far from happy about the prospect of dying in an unpopular war with a close country, fighting against the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who have combat experience, motivation, modern weapons and communications.

The Belarusian army is assessed by analysts and Western intelligence as "parquet", with minimal capabilities to conduct complex operations, capable of creating only a border conflict.

In addition, Belarusian equipment seems to be being transferred to Russia: in mid-October, trains loaded with military trucks and old T-72A tanks, retired from the Belarusian army, were seen in Orša (a city near the Russian border).

The authorities explained that the tanks were being sent for modernization, although there was no modernization program for this model in Russia. Thus, the resources of the Belarusian army itself are getting lower.

Last month, sociologists showed that more than half of the Belarusian society would support the forceful setoff of Lukashenko - this is a tenfold increase in such sentiments compared to September 2020.

The Belarusian democratic forces, led by Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, have openly announced that they are preparing for various scenarios of a change of power, including a forceful one. They arrange combat training courses in Poland and other EU countries, they try to establish ties with the Belarusians who fight in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

They also declare that there is a large network of people ready to rebel inside Belarus (the "Peramoga" plan from BYPOL) - it is important to wait for a destabilising moment. In the event that the Belarusian army joins the invasion, this moment will surely come for the following reasons:

1. The factors that restrain Ukraine from responding to aggression from the territory of Belarus will disappear, which means that HIMARS can strike both on airfields in the border areas and on the Mozyr oil refinery.
2. Not unarmed people, as in 2020, but a well-trained, equipped and motivated Ukrainian army will be fighting against the inexperienced troops of the regime.
3. The soldiers mobilised into the Armed Forces of Belarus can easily turn out to have oppositional views and go over to the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with all the weapons, joining the Belarusian volunteer units.
4. There is no way to hide a military defeat from the eyes of people who want to stay as far away from the war as possible.

The probability that an invasion by the Belarusian army in Ukraine will end in success is extremely low. But the possibility that a defeat in an offensive war, participation in which is extremely unpopular in society and the army, will become a very destabilising moment, is very high. That is why, if Alexander Lukashenko is going to give the order for the invasion, it makes sense for him to start refuelling the plane that will fly to Rostov.

Belaruski Hajun project team

The column is a material that reflects exceptionally the point of view of the author. The text of the column does not claim objectivity and comprehensive coverage of the topic it raises. The editorial office of Ukrainska Pravda is not responsible for the reliability and interpretation of the given information and performs exclusively the role of a carrier. The point of view of the editorial office of Ukrainska Pravda may not coincide with the point of view of the author of the column.