* 30 June: “Keep An Eye On Ukraine’s Military Buildup Along The Belarusian Border”
* 8 August: “Five Lessons For Russia To Learn From Ukraine’s Sneak Attack Against Kursk Region”
* 10 August: “Last Year’s Pentagon Leaks Proved That Zelensky Was Plotting To Invade Russia Since January 2023”
In brief, the first crisis de-escalated after Kiev reportedly removed its troops first and then Minsk naively assumed that its neighbor thus had no aggressive intentions so it followed suit, while the second is the natural culmination of those aforesaid attacks. It should also be said that Belarus’ decision to de-escalate border tensions with Ukraine inadvertently freed up more of the latter’s forces for invading Russia even though that’s of course not what Lukashenko intended to have happen.
The fog of war makes it difficult to accurately assess the situation in Kursk Region, but most reports indicate that Ukraine’s offensive has halted and that it might be digging in for the long run. This adds context to its drone incursions over Belarus by suggesting that its General Staff could be probing for weaknesses all along the Union State’s border. The swiftness with which Ukraine broke through the Russian border might embolden it to try replicating this against Belarus as a diversionary tactic.
It's premature to jump to conclusions, but that could further stretch Russia’s forces and help advance Ukraine’s goal of coercing its foe to transfer some of them from the Donbass front if it happens, which is widely thought to be the primary objective behind its sneak attack against Kursk Region. Likewise, Ukraine’s reported probing into Belgorod Region and its latest attack against the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) complement these efforts, all of which aim to keep Russian on edge and guessing.
The military-strategic situation is curiously similar to the days before Ukraine’s ultimately failed counteroffensive last summer when “The Union State Expected That The NATO-Russian Proxy War Will Expand” to possibility include Belarus, Moldova, and/or Russia’s pre-2014 territory. That didn’t happen as is now known, perhaps due to urgently improved border defenses at the time that might have since been scaled back due to complacency, but Ukraine certainly seems to be seriously considering it now.
As for the Moldovan option, it’s always been a wildcard that Kiev has thus far held off on playing despite prior Russian concerns, though that doesn’t mean that it should be forgotten about. One argument against expanding the conflict to that front is that it could inadvertently stretch Ukraine’s own forces even further and thus facilitate a possible Russian breakthrough in Donbass, which is precisely what Ukraine is trying to prevent or delay as long as possible through various means.
Kiev might still gamble that it can get NATO to directly intervene on its side by provoking Belarus to respond, including through a potentially forthcoming conventional attack. The conflict’s military-strategic dynamics continue to favor Russia even in spite of what’s happening in Kursk Region so Ukraine might soon become desperate enough to implement its own “Samson Option” of trying to expand the conflict in every direction possible if its leadership comes to believe that defeat is inevitable.
In that scenario, it might also finally play the Moldovan wildcard and attempt Kursk-like sneak attacks against other Russian border regions, though even then it couldn’t be taken for granted that NATO would conventionally intervene or that their intervention would result in preventing Ukraine’s defeat. Moreover, the US might calculate that frantically trying to expand the conflict in every direction possible isn’t in its interests, in which case it could try to dissuade Ukraine of this or covertly stop it if it still does.
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