{"id":2028,"date":"2026-06-24T04:13:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/2028\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:13:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:13:05","slug":"zelensky-threatens-belarus-as-nato-hovers-at-edges-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/2028\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelensky threatens Belarus as NATO hovers at edges of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave<\/a> Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko a one-week ultimatum: remove all equipment assisting Russia<\/a> with drone targeting or Ukraine would strike Belarus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he doesn\u2019t do it, we will,\u201d he said, adding that \u201ca week is enough for him to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the first days of Russia\u2019s invasion, Ukraine<\/a> and its Western partners including the U.S.<\/a> and NATO<\/a>, have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s ambitions would not be contained to the borders of Ukraine. They claimed that if not dealt with, Russia would attack other European and NATO countries. The UK, relying on its own intelligence and echoing other European leaders, said Russia would be prepared<\/a> to strike by 2020.<\/p>\n

But the real risk of a widening war at the moment comes from Ukraine, and on two fronts \u2014 the Baltic states and Belarus. On May 19, a Romanian F-16 fighter jet based in Lithuania shot down<\/a> a Ukrainian drone in Estonian airspace after it had flown through Latvian airspace. It was not the first Ukrainian drone flying through the airspace of a Baltic country. Russia has accused the Baltic countries of permitting the Ukrainian armed forces to use \u201cair corridors\u201d that reduce flight times to targets deep inside Russia and increase their effectiveness. <\/p>\n

In response, the Baltic countries say<\/a> Russia is \u201clying,\u201d and Kiev insists<\/a> that \u201cUkraine has never requested such a use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more serious is Russia\u2019s accusation<\/a> that Ukraine is coordinating with Latvia to allow Kyiv to launch drones from its territory. Latvia’s envoy to the Security Council called<\/a> the Russian claim \u201cpure fiction.\u201d Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Bra\u017ee said this was part <\/a>of a disinformation campaign against her country.<\/p>\n

The Baltic nations \u2014 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia \u2014 are NATO members. Putin has warned<\/a> that \u201cRussia would treat all Ukrainian drone launch sites as legitimate targets, even if they operate from the Baltic states.\u201d This risks drawing NATO \u2014 and the U.S. \u2014 into a direct war with Russia. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has warned<\/a> that \u201cthe coordinates of decision-making centers on Latvian territory are well known\u201d and that \u201cNATO membership will not protect terrorist accomplices from just retribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

This war of words, including Zelensky\u2019s most recent threats, is getting dangerous.<\/p>\n

In his charges last week, Zelensky accused Belarus of installing four<\/a> signal relay stations on communications towers on its territory to assist Russia in directing drones targeting Ukraine. He said<\/a> Minsk has been warned through intelligence and military channels to \u201cstop helping the Russians.\u201d He added that \u201cRussia will keep pushing [Lukashenko] further into this war,\u201d but that the Belarusian president now \u201cunderstands that Ukraine will respond.\u201d <\/p>\n

When the Commander of Ukraine\u2019s Unmanned Systems Forces said<\/a> that they have identified 500 targets on Belarusian territory and that \u201cwe know where Lukashenko is,\u201d Lukaschenko responded<\/a> that Ukraine may have identified 500 targets, but \u201cwe have one very serious target, with precise coordinates.\u201d Lukashenko later apologized<\/a> for his role in the escalation of words, adding that \u201cno military action should be expected from Belarus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belarus and Russia are strategic partners<\/a> and members of the Union State of Belarus and Russia. Belarus hosts Russian tactical nuclear weapons that are fully under Russia\u2019s control, and Russia used Belarus territory to launch its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, Belarusian troops have not entered the war. People with expertise on Belarus and familiarity with the situation told Responsible Statecraft that Lukashenko has used every means at his disposal to avoid being drawn deeper into Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

While the Ukrainian complaint has a basis, it is being blown out of proportion, say experts. While there is intelligence sharing between Russia and Belarus, some of which is being used to help Russian forces with drone targeting, the scope and impact are not as strategically important as Ukraine is suggesting.<\/p>\n

Ukraine has other issues. Despite an increasing series of spectacular drone strikes deep inside Russia, the war on the battlefield isn\u2019t going as well as the mainstream would like us to believe. Russian advances have increased again recently, and the key strategic city of Kostyantynivka is now in real danger of falling<\/a> to Russian forces. <\/p>\n

If it falls, Russia\u2019s goal of taking all of Donbas will be within reach. Zelensky wants the \u201chot phase\u201d of the war to end by winter,<\/a> and has suggested<\/a> certain parts of contested Ukraine could come under the NATO security umbrella to achieve that. <\/p>\n

Nicolai Petro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, suggested to RS that Zelensky\u2019s threat against Belarus \u201cmay make sense in the context of his overall strategy of trying to provoke an escalation from Russia or Belarus that would necessitate NATO’s direct military intervention.\u201d <\/p>\n

Petro, however, questions whether European leaders would intervene under such circumstances. Alexander Hill, Professor in Military History at the University of Calgary, agrees, telling RS that he suspects Zelensky\u2019s threat is another part of his \u201cattempts to widen the war and ultimately drag NATO into a more active role.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts say that Kiev could be signaling to Belarus and Europe<\/a> that it will not tolerate constructive engagement between Minsk and the EU during the war. Ukraine is anxious to see a European security architecture that emerges from the war confront, not include, Russia. Keeping Belarus out is part of that strategy. If so, that would represent a tragic failure to learn from past mistakes.<\/p>\n

The tensions over how and whether Baltic airspace is being used and the threat delivered to Belarus show how dangerous the risk of escalation beyond Russia and Ukraine is becoming. Zelensky may not be posturing or issuing idle threats. Experts believe Zelensky could be seeing how far he can go and that, if there are no existential objections from key European players, there is a good chance he’ll keep pushing.<\/p>\n

From Your Site Articles<\/p>\n

Related Articles Around the Web<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On June 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko a one-week ultimatum: remove all equipment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32,52,1055,162,144,51,276,67,662],"class_list":["post-2028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-belarus","tag-kyiv","tag-lukaschenko","tag-minsk","tag-nato","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-war","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelensky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}