(Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said on Saturday that tensions had subsided at his country’s border with Ukraine and extra troops deployed there were being sent back to their bases.
Belarus’s defence ministry said late last month that it was reinforcing its border after a security incident and in response to a Ukrainian troop buildup. They said a division of multiple launch rocket systems had been deployed to test their combat readiness.
Lukashenko, quoted by the official BelTA news agency during a tour of a border region, said that Belarusian intelligence had determined that Ukraine had withdrawn troops from sensitive areas.
“That means that those (Ukrainian) troops which had been brought in as reinforcements are now gone,” BelTA quoted him as saying. “…There are now no difficulties with the Ukrainians and I hope there will be none.”
BelTA said he told a meeting of regional officials that the additional Belarusian troops dispatched to the area should return to their assigned bases.
“Well, friends, we have to pull back our troops from the border,” he was quoted as saying. “So that it is understood that we have no intention of fighting or concentrating our armed forces here, apart from special operations forces.”
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guards, in a statement posted online, dismissed the notion of an extra deployment.
“From the outset the Belarusians created this threat for themselves and then lifted the very same threat,” it said.
Russia had said the Belarusian statements and deployment were “cause for concern”.
Lukashenko allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory to launch the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but has made plain he has no intention of committing troops to the conflict.
The Belarusian president, in power since 1994, relied on Putin’s assurances of support in quelling unprecedented mass protests in 2020 by demonstrators alleging he rigged his re-election to a sixth term.
The two men meet regularly and Russia has in the past year has deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski, Editing by Franklin Paul)
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