Belarus and Russia have agreed on the deployment of a joint group of troops, a potentially significant development in the war in Ukraine.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said he agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the deployment of a joint regional group of troops, in response to what he called an aggravation of tension on the country's western borders, the state-run Belta news agency reported on Monday.
Lukashenko and Putin warned about a strike on Belarus from the territory of Ukraine.
“Due to the aggravation on the western borders of the Union State, we have agreed to deploy a regional grouping of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus", he said.
He continued: "This is all in accordance with our documents. If the threat level reaches the current level, as it is now, we start deploying the Union State grouping.
“The backbone – I have always talked about this – of this grouping is the army, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus.
"I have to inform you that the formation of this grouping has begun. It has been underway for, I think, two days already. My order was given to us to start forming this group."
The news comes as Russia is fiercely shelling Ukraine's capital Kyiv and other cities across the country in the most intense blasts to hit the Ukrainian capital since the early days of the war.
As for warnings about strikes from Ukraine, Mr Lukashenko said his answer was simple, to tell the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and "other insane people" that the Crimean bridge "will seem like flowers to them if they touch at least one meter of our territory with their dirty hands."
The Belarusian President previously said he received assurances from the Russian warmonger that Russia would regard an attack against Belarus as an attack against Russia.
"Strikes on the territory of Belarus are not just being discussed in Ukraine today, but are also being planned," Lukashenko said at a meeting on security, without providing evidence for the assertion. "Their owners are pushing them to start a war against Belarus to drag us there."
Belarus's army has about 60,000 people and earlier this year, Belarus deployed six battalion-tactical groups, totalling several thousand people, to the border areas.
On Sunday, the head of Belarus's border guards accused Ukraine of provocations at the border.
Russian forces used Belarus as a staging post for their invasion of Ukraine at the start of February, sending troops and equipment into northern Ukraine from bases in Belarus.
