Russian Federation (RF) officers are trying to convince members of Belarus’ elite special forces units to fight on Russia’s side against Ukraine, but the Belarusian soldiers and offers want nothing to do with the idea, a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday evening, March 13.
Oleksiy Danylov, head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, told television viewers agents from the RF’s successor organization to the KGB, the FSB, have been contacting members of Belarusian Spetsnaz army units and special forces police units, and offering them Russian army contracts. The Belarusians would wear RF army uniforms and receive high pay, Danilov said.
Ukraine’s military has estimated that the Kremlin’s forces have suffered casualties between 12 and 15 thousand killed, and another 15 and possibly 30 thousand hospitalized, due to fierce Ukrainian resistance to the RF invasion launched on Feb. 24.
RF officials over the last week have announced a number of steps apparently intended to fill the thinned ranks of the invasion force, among them transfer of peacekeeping troops from the Caucasus, recruitment of mercenaries from Serbia and Syria, deployment of Chechen police, and railroading naval defense forces from Russia’s Far East, to Ukraine.
Danilov said that Ukrainian intelligence has evidence that the strong majority of Belarusian military personnel approached by the FSB rejected the offer.
Last week RF aircraft reportedly flew into Ukraine and then bombed a site in Belarus, a move Ukrainian intelligence officials said the Kremlin made to try and pressure Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko to commit his army to back RF forces in Ukraine. Lukashenko flew to Moscow for a meeting with RF President Vladimir Putin, but, Belarus’ army remained in place.
A Monday morning situation report made public by Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS) said that Belarusian forces based on their locations and deployments have the capacity of invading Ukraine quickly, but, there are no indications they intend to do so.
