“You cannot compare today with what happened in February or March, when endless columns of vehicles advanced towards Ukraine and then returned”, says Jelena, a resident of the Belarusian city of Mosyr. She is talking about Russian soldiers who from Belarus launched their offensive on kyiv, in the Ukraine. Now, on the other hand, military personnel are rarely seen on the streets. Until recently, however, it was normal to see them in the city. Not since February, when the offensive was launched, but before, due to Russian-Belarusian military maneuvers that preceded the war.
According to Jelena, the last few weeks had been very tense in Mosyr, despite the fact that the troops are no longer inside the city, but in a camp on the outskirts. “Soldiers were often seen in shopping malls, bars and restaurants. I don’t know if there was any problem with the neighbors, at least I haven’t heard anything, but the Russians behaved very rudely, as if they were the owners of this”, says the woman.
🛑⚡️📹 || Residents of the town of Stepnoye, located 300 meters from the front line, reveal how they were shelled by the Ukrainian Forces after receiving # Humanitarian Aid from Russia.#Russia 🇷🇺 #Ukraine 🇺🇦 #UcraniaEnElCorazonRTVE #UcraniaRussia pic.twitter.com/qm5YtDookI
— Al Furkán (@AngelVazquez40) April 24, 2022
When the Russian troops left Ukraine, they took with them household appliances and other things that were stolen during the invasion. According to Jelena, the military tried to sell their loot to the residents of Mosyr, in a market created spontaneously for it. They even tried to sell diesel, a product that was in high demand. But the soldiers avoided talking about Ukraine because “they said they were forbidden to talk about that subject.”
Silence on the train tracks
Meanwhile, military equipment is not seen on the railway stations near the border with Ukraine. Residents of Gomel, Mosyr and other cities of the region write on social networks that now it is very rare to see transports with armored vehicles, tanks and other weapons. “Most of the time we see them, they are damaged vehicles that need to be removed, because apparently they cannot be repaired here,” says a resident of Gomel.
The fact that the Belarusian rail network is now rarely used for the transportation of military equipment may also be due to acts of sabotage perpetrated against its infrastructure. Since the beginning of the invasion, at least 10 cases have been reported in Belarus. Even the authorities have recognized some of them and have described them as “acts of terrorism”.
Forbidden to enter the forests
Although the presence of Russian soldiers is less visible in the big Belarusian cities, the inhabitants of the smaller towns in the border areas with Ukraine have the impression of that the Russian units are hidden in the woods.
This is deduced from the order that prevails from the 18 of April that strictly prohibits entry to the forests in 10 districts in the Gomel region and in three in Brest. The official explanation for this ban is the high risk of fire in forests and moors, but the villagers doubt this argument, since spring has been cold this year and no forest fires have been reported.
Mijail, who lives in Olmany (Brest region), thinks that the rumours, which say that in the forests there are ammunition and weapons, they are the real reason for the ban. “There is a lot of talk about the fact that there are caches in our forests and swamps where the Russian army stored mines and explosives. Something must have gone wrong”, the man speculates.
The instructions that the local authorities have given to the people who live in the border area support these suspicions. They ask to report as soon as possible about any finding of weapons, ammunition and explosives. Those who do not report will be prosecuted. Those types of warnings did not exist before the invasion, say the neighbors.
“Protection against possible saboteurs”
In Belarusian forests, especially in the Brest and Gomel regions , bordering Ukraine, there are still military units. However, they are no longer Russian soldiers, but members of the Belarusian security forces. According to reports from the Belarusian Ministry of Defense, the troops “carry out reinforcement tasks in the sections of the country’s southern border.”
As a Belarusian army major who prefers to keep anonymity, the operation is officially described as “protection from potential saboteurs and illegal armed groups”. However, the officer acknowledges that the situation in the region does not pose a greater danger at the moment.
The head of the Belarusian Security Council, Alexander Wolfowitsch, for his part, said in an interview with the Belarusian state press that the risk of “provocations against Belarus” to try to “involve the country in the conflict”.
Read more :
If we want peace, we must demand it
Zelensky denounces Russian concentration camps and deportations to Siberia
Two months of war with the “liberation” of Donbas as the goal of the Kremlin
2022