MOSCOW, RUSSIA – JUNE 24, 2020: T-80BVM tanks drive to Vasilyevsky Spusk Square for victory … [+]
Elite paratroopers placed on alert. A rise in military truck convoys and cargo flights.
This would be some of the signs that Russia is preparing to invade its neighbor Belarus.
To be clear, massive Russian military intervention in Belarus is not the most likely scenario. The Kremlin is clearly concerned about the unrest in Belarus, where massive protests have erupted against President Alexander Lukashenko, who just won a sixth term in an election broadly declared rigged. But a European nation of 10 million people would be economically and politically expensive.
“Speculation that Russia would send troops to defend Belarus jumps several steps away from other, more likely Russian support,” said Dara Massicot, an analyst at the US think tank RAND. “In short, for military police, Russian troops are not the best tool for the Kremlin to support the Lukashenko government. Tanks and other battlefield weapons are not suitable tools for suppressing riots. ”
But then again, Russian invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 also came as a surprise to Western observers. Lukashenko claimed that NATO troops were massaging on Belarus’ border, and knew full well that Moscow would respond strongly to even a hint of foreign military intervention on Russia’s sensitive western border.
So what would be the signs that Russia would invade at the moment? There would probably be no narrative mobilization of reservists: troops already based in the Western Military District, which joins Belarus and Ukraine, would provide enough forces. “Russia has a lot of what it needs relatively close to Belarus, and given that this is the start-up period for the annual exercises for strategic command personnel, the honesty is quite high,” said Michael Kofman, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyzes, my.
“You have elements of the 6th and 20th Combined Arms Armies, supported by 1st Guards Tank Army and 76th Air Assault Division, right there. Your closest maneuvering units are the 144th Motor Rifle Division, 4th Tank Division and 25th Motor Rifle Brigade. These would be supported by army aviation [helicopter] brigades, and the 6th Air and Air Defense Army. ”
Instead, they would be more subtle characters. For example, keep an eye on the elite 76th Air Assault Division, says Massicot. The division has fought in most minor Russian wars, including conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, as well as the 2014 invasion of Ukraine in which Russia annexed Crimea.
“As long as the 76th Guards Air Assault Division in Pskov, one of Russia’s first responder units, normally operates at garrison, there will be no military intervention near northeastern Russia,” Massicot predicts.
Other warning signs would be data on tracking tracks that have increased military transport flights between Russia and Belarus, such as more military truck convoys and rail traffic. But that is a problem, because the Russian military will already be in motion in September for the massive Kavkaz-20 exercises in southern Russia. “A significant amount of military equipment from the Southern Military District, and possibly other military districts, will move in convoy and to their training areas,” Massicot said.
“The problem with checking convoys of road or rail equipment is that you can not tell where they are going. Especially with trucks, it will be difficult to tell who or what is inside. ”
Russian troops would probably have invaded Belarus in the same way as it would have invaded western Europe in the 1980s, with fast-moving armored columns preceded by parachutists and helicopter-attacking troops visiting important points. With 21,000 rivers, 3,000 streams and 4,000 lakes in Belarus, Russian commanders will fight to get major bridges quickly in the way of the armored spearheads.
“I think one thing that can happen is to get a seizure at the airport through airfields, and then the rest of the air will be flown,” Kofman says. “They will secure baselines of communication while other units enter by helicopter, which will connect with the much heavier ground forces.”
There is no doubt that the initial stages of a Russian invasion would be a pushover. Essentially a microcosm of the Russian army, the Belarussian army has only about 45,000 active duty personnel compared to 900,000 for Russia. Their equipment includes the usual array of older Soviet weapons: T-72 tanks and MiG-29 fighters, plus a few S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.
And whether the Belarusian army would even fight a Russian invasion is an open question. “Belarus has a relatively small army with a handful of mechanized brigades, with air and spearheads. [special forces] troops, ”says Kofman. “Assuming it would fight – that’s a big if – it would not be able to offer sustained resistance and would soon overcome it in an engagement.”
But what then? Belarus is 80,000 square miles, much of it forest and swamp. During World War II, it was the epicenter of a fierce guerrilla war between Nazi invaders and partisans living in forests and swamps. Assuming that the present population offers armed as passive resistance, a Russian occupation today would be a military mess.
It would also be economically and politically painful. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 has already resolved international sanctions. Invading another European nation would certainly impose even harsher punishments against Russia’s sputtering economy, as well as encourage NATO nations to increase their solidarity – and their defense spending.
Rather than send in the army, it is more likely that Moscow – which is already vocal about Lukashenko – would choose a less drastic option, such as sending out police units or insurgent check equipment to support the embattled regime. “Given the nature of the problem facing Lukashenko, Russian internal security forces specializing in crowd control, such as the OMON police, would make more sense for the Kremlin,” Massicot said.
Or, the Belarusian government could ask Moscow for limited military support. “Lukashenko may ask Russian special forces to support him, as a major deployment of ‘peacekeepers’ such as the Russian National Guard,” Kofman said.
Nevertheless, even if invasion is not the Kremlin’s most likely option, it will remain an option. After centuries of invasion by Mongol cavalry, Napoleon’s infantry and Nazi tanks, Russia’s rulers are taking the security of their borders very seriously. And Belarus’s capital, Minsk, is just 400 miles from Moscow.
“If Belarus grows unstable, Moscow’s options will be dimmed, forcing it to consider an intervention that could backfire,” warns Kofman. “They will not be able to live with a Belarusian basketball business across the border, because a zero-sum calculation would dictate that Russia does something to secure its interests in Belarus – or Western countries will start trading.”
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