Russia Secretly Transferring Military To Belarus By Tank Cars

The railway tank-cars are used to deceive satellite monitoring systems.

Russia is transferring its troops to Belarus by hiding them in railway tank-cars, reports Nasha Niva, citing sources.

According to them, the tank cars are used to deceive the satellite monitoring systems and other ways of monitoring the shipments. The sources do not know whether military equipment and ammunition are transported in this or any other secret way.

Russia used Belarus as a springboard to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Russian military have been deployed in the country since October and are taking part in exercises as part of a joint regional grouping of troops. Their exact number is unknown. In the fall, the Belarusian Defence Ministry claimed there were 9,000 Russian servicemen. The head of the Ukrainian Border Guard Service, Serhiy Deineko, spoke of 10,200 in late December.

The active redeployment of Russian forces to the border with Ukraine in Belarus began after President Vladimir Putin's first visit to Minsk for the past three years. Despite this, neither Kyiv nor the West saw any significant threat of an attack from this direction.

However, after the change of the commander of the Russian army in Ukraine from Sergey Surovikin to Valeriy Gerasimov and the announcement of joint exercises, the situation has changed to some extent. On January 12, the Kremlin sent one of Gerasimov's three new deputies, Land Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleg Salyukov, to Belarus. His task might be establishing the command structures needed for the strike force, analysts of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted. Such anomalous actions by the Kremlin reinforce suspicions that Russia is preparing an invasion of Ukraine from Belarus, the report said.

Against this background, the Ukrainian army has started to prepare for a possible offensive from the north. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are pulling back military units there. Fortifications, anti-tank barriers, and mines are being built in Rivne and Kyiv regions that border with Belarus. The head of the Rivne administration, Vitaliy Koval, said that the area would turn into a "Palesse mousetrap and bloody swamps" if Russian forces attempt an offensive.

Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Air Force Command of the AFU, stressed after the start of the Russian-Belarusian exercise that Ukraine was "closely monitoring all the airfields" used in the republic. "All of them are under close control of our radar reconnaissance and all reconnaissance in general. We know everything. If they dare to make such a brazen move, they will hardly be able even to reach the borders," he said, assessing the potential landing of Russian paratroopers in the northern regions or in Kyiv.