Lukashenko asserts that nearly one-third of the Belarusian army is stationed on the Ukrainian border

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus stated on Sunday that Minsk had stationed over one-third of its military forces along the whole border and that Ukraine had stationed over 120,000 troops at its border with Belarus, according to the Belta state news agency.

Speaking against the background of the Ukrainian invasion into Russia, which started on August 6 when hundreds of Kyiv’s forces broke past Russia’s western border, embarrassing Putin’s senior military command, was Lukashenko, a devoted ally of Vladimir Putin.

In an interview with Russian state television, Belta quoted Lukashenko as stating, “Seeing their aggressive policy, we have introduced there and placed in certain points – in case of war, they would be defense – our military along the entire border.”

A Reuters request for comment was not answered by Kyiv.

The situation on the border with Belarus is still the same, according to Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border service, who talked to the Ukrainian media site Ukrainska Pravda on Sunday.

“As we can see, Lukashenko’s rhetoric does not change either, constantly escalating the situation with regularity to please the terrorist country,” Demchenko added.

“We are not seeing any increase in the number of equipment or personnel of Belarusian units near our border.”

The number of soldiers that Minsk stationed at the border was not specified by Lukashenko. The 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance estimates that Belarus’s professional army consists of around 48,000 soldiers and approximately 12,000 state border forces.

According to Belarus’s Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin, the situation at their shared border “remains tense” and there is a significant likelihood of an armed provocation from neighboring Ukraine.

Belarus-Ukrainian border is “as never before” mined, according to Lukashenko, and Ukrainian soldiers attempting to cross it would suffer severe losses.