Russians utilise "carousel" tactics in Belarus to hold Ukraine under pressure

Although the threat of renewed Russian invasion from Ukraine's northern border with Belarus is not inevitable, it cannot be ruled out, says the head of the Ukrainian Chief Intelligence Directorate, Kyrylo Budanov.

Source: Budanov in an interview with The New York Times

Quote: "It would be wrong to discount this possibility, but it would also be wrong to say that we have any data confirming it exists."

Details: However, according to the Head of the Ukrainian Chief Intelligence Directorate, there is no data indicating an immediate threat from Belarus.

According to Budanov, Russian troops are not lined up in assault formations. Training camps for Russian soldiers are filled with recently mobilised civilians who, after completing training, are sent to fight in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the training sites lack armoured vehicles in mechanically working order to stage an attack.

Russia’s military has tried to raise alarms in the Ukrainian army by loading soldiers on trains that chug towards Belarus’s border with Ukraine. The Soviet Union employed similar tactics during World War II, sending soldiers on useless train rides to simulate an attack or retreat.

In Belarus, one train carrying Russian soldiers recently stopped for half a day near the border with Ukraine and then returned with all the soldiers aboard, Budanov said, calling their imitation tactic a "carousel."

Similarly, according to Budanov, Russia's cross-border artillery shelling of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions of northeastern Ukraine, which has killed and wounded dozens of people, is not a harbinger of an immediate threat of a repeat invasion.

At the moment, Russian military units are not assembled for an attack, and it is simply impossible to form them in one day, Budanov noted.

Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!