Ukraine risks losing control of border with Belarus, expert says

Ukraine risks losing control of its border with
Belarus in the coming years, which may have worse consequences than the war in
Donbas, said on Jan. 3 Ivan Aparshyn, a former Ukrainian defense official and
military expert. “I don’t rule out that in the next two to three years, the
Belarus front will become for Ukraine more of a threat than the Donetsk and
Luhansk front,” he said in a television interview. “And the consequences there
will be a lot scarier because it’s direct access to Kyiv.” Ensuring Ukraine’s
defenses on the Belarus front will take years, he added. “This is an entirely
different configuration of the nation’s defenses, entirely different resources,
decisions and vision,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying in
recent weeks to implement a 1999 agreement creating a federation between Russia
and Belarus, Leonid Bershidsky, a columnist for the Bloomberg News agency,
reported on Jan. 8. The federation, run by a Supreme State Council, calls for a
single currency, flag and emblem, a common market and a unified judiciary. Just
as importantly, leading the council would give Putin an influential position
that protects him from rivals after he retires in 2024, Bershidsky wrote.
“During two meetings with (Aleksandr) Lukashenko in late December, however,
Putin failed to convince his junior partner to go down the unification path,”
he wrote. “Most Belarusians, too, believe Belarus should be independent, though
a Russian ally.”

Zenon Zawada: The federation’s creation doesn’t include military integration, but
that could easily be a consequence. And given that Russia’s plan to regain
control of Ukrainian territory is for the mid- to long-term (five years, at
least), we share Aparshyn’s view that the Belarus border should be a prime
concern for Ukraine’s leadership. But Ukraine could face expanded Russian
military aggression as early as this year, just as easily.