Belarus deploys forces on Ukraine border
Minsk, Belarus – The Belarusian military has deployed forces to the border with Ukraine following a Ukrainian incursion into Russia, which has claimed control of a strategic new town and warned of a “world war”.
“There is a high probability of armed provocations from neighboring Ukraine,” Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said Friday, according to the state-run Belta news agency.
Khrenin ordered the deployment of Belarusian forces to the Gomel and Mozyr areas in the south of the country, including special operations forces and missile units that will move from their permanent deployment points to the designated areas.
The troop buildup on Belarus’ southern border comes as Ukraine has pushed into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow on Friday claimed control of a town about 15 kilometers from the strategic city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
“As a result of the offensive actions of the troops of the Center group of forces, the settlement of Serhiivka has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on Telegram. The ministry had announced the capture of another town in the same area on Thursday.
Russia’s TASS news agency also cited unidentified security sources as saying that Russian forces had destroyed a Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage unit with NATO- supplied weapons in the Kursk region of western Russia.
Earlier on Friday, Russia said it had intercepted 12 US-made missiles fired by Ukrainian forces at the Crimean Bridge connecting Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
“Air defense means repelled a strike by 12 American-made ATACMS missiles fired at the Crimean Bridge overnight,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian evacuation
Meanwhile, military officials in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut urged civilians on Friday to speed up their evacuation as Russian forces rapidly approach what has been one of Moscow’s key targets in the war for months.
The call for people to leave as quickly as possible came as Kyiv’s forces try to shift the Kremlin’s military focus back to Russian soil by launching a daring incursion across the border into the Kursk region.
Evacuations from the Donetsk region around Bakhmut have become increasingly urgent in recent weeks. “Russian troops are advancing at a fast pace with each passing day, and there is less and less time to collect belongings and leave for safer areas,” Bakhmut officials said in a Telegram post on Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Thursday that Bakhmut and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region “are facing the most severe Russian attacks”. “Priority supplies and everything necessary are being delivered there,” Zelenskyy said on the X platform.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Friday it had shot down all five drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack.
The air force’s statement on Telegram said the Russian forces used three Iskander-M ballistic missiles in the attack, as well as three Shahed drones and “two more drones of an unidentified type”.
Reuters reported earlier that Russia has been using cheap drones as decoys in some of its attacks on Ukraine, in an attempt to pinpoint the locations of air defenses. The governors of the Kyiv and Kirovohrad regions confirmed that there were no casualties or damage from the attack.
World War
The fighting on the ground has been accompanied by political rhetoric from Russia accusing the United States and NATO of involvement in the Ukrainian offensive into Kursk.
Nikolai Patrushev, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the US-led military alliance and the West were directly involved in planning Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s Kursk region.
Patrushev told the Russian newspaper Izvestia that US statements about its non-involvement in the attack were “untrue, and without their direct participation and support, Kyiv would not have risked entering Russian territory”.
“The operation in the Kursk region was planned with the involvement of NATO and Western intelligence services,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Russian lawmaker Mikhail Sheremet said that the Western-backed Ukrainian incursion into Russia was “putting the world on the brink of a full-scale world war”.
TASS news agency quoted the lawmaker as saying: “Given the presence of Western military equipment with the use of Western ammunition and missiles in the attacks on civilian infrastructure, as well as the obvious evidence of the participation of foreigners in the attack on Russian territory, we can conclude that the world is on the verge of a third world war.”
Sheremet, a member of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, said that NATO countries had given the green light for the incursion – an accusation the US has denied.
While Ukraine and its allies say that Russia is receiving support for its war effort from China, Iran, and North Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged on Friday to strengthen cooperation with Russia and expressed confidence that Moscow would emerge victorious in its “sacred war for peace and justice.”.
Russia has been fighting Ukrainian forces in Kursk since August 6 after Kyiv’s surprise incursion in what was the most significant offensive on Russian-held territory since World War II. It has since made significant advances that have forced Moscow to evacuate over 200,000 people from their homes.
