Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv watchful of borders as Vladimir Putin headed to Belarus

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends in the conference in Paris in solidarity with the Ukrainian people through videoconference.

File Photo

KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready for all possible defence scenarios against Moscow and its ally Belarus, as Russia's Vladimir Putin headed to Belarus and Russian troops stationed there prepared to conduct exercises. Officials in Kyiv have warned for months that neighbouring Belarus could join Russian forces and serve again as a launching pad for a new attack to form a second front in the months-long war. "Protecting our border, both with Russia and Belarus - is our constant priority," Zelenskiy said after a meeting on Sunday of Ukraine's top military command. "We are preparing for all possible defence scenarios." Putin heads to Belarus on Monday for his first visit in 3-1/2 years with the Kremlin describing it as a broad "working visit" with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus - one of Russia's closest allies- allowed its territory to be used as a launchpad for Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, but has not joined the fighting directly. Lukashenko has said repeatedly he has no intention of sending his country's troops into Ukraine. Whatever Lukashenko might be persuaded to do for Russia "this will not help them, just like all the other sick ideas in this war against Ukraine and Ukrainians," Zelenskiy said. Russian troops that were moved to Belarus in October will conduct battalion tactical exercises, the Russian Interfax news agency reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.

It was not immediately clear when and where in Belarus the exercises will be conducted. Kyiv and surrounding areas came under attack again early on Monday, with the Ukrainian capital's military administration saying nine Iranian-made Shahed drones were shot down in Kyiv's airspace. "Air defence systems are at work in the region," Oleksiy Kuleba, governor of the Kyiv region said on Telegram. "Stay in shelters and safe places until the alarm is over. Take care of yourself and loved ones."

Several loud blasts were heard, but it was not immediately clear whether they were air defence systems destroying the drones or drones hitting their targets. Zelenskiy on Sunday again called for Western nations to beef up Ukraine's air defences after weeks of Russian air strikes targeted the country's energy network as a freezing winter settles in.

Zelenskiy said power had been restored to three million more Ukrainians in the past 24 hours following a massive missile attack on electricity infrastructure on Friday that killed three people and damaged nine power facilities. "Electricity supplies have been restored to a further three million Ukrainians," he said. "Plus six million yesterday. That means after the terrorist strikes on Friday, we have results already for nine million of our people."

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes. Zelenskiy told Ukrainians the armed forces were holding firm in the town of Bakhmut - scene of the fiercest fighting in the country for many weeks as Russia attempts to advance in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region. "The battlefield in Bakhmut is critical," he said. "We control the town even though the occupiers are doing everything so that no undamaged wall will remain standing."

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed administrator of the portion of the Donetsk region controlled by Moscow, said that Ukrainian forces shelled a hospital in Donetsk city, killing one person and injuring several others. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts. Putin casts what he calls Russia's "special military operation" as a watershed moment when Moscow finally stood up to a Western bloc, led by the United States, seeking to capitalize on the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by destroying Russia.

Kyiv and the West say Putin has no justification for what they have decried as an imperial-style war of occupation that has resulted in Russia now controlling around a fifth of Ukraine. Henry Kissinger, an architect of the Cold War policy of detente towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state in the 1970s, said the time was approaching for a negotiated peace.

"The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation," Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine. Ukraine rejected the proposal, saying it amounted to appeasing the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine.

"All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil - a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories - will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world," Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said on Telegram. Kremlin officials were not available for comment late on Sunday.