The war in Ukraine is moving dangerously close to Belarus, Moscow’s number one ally but whose troops have so far been cautiously staying out of the conflict. On the night of Wednesday 4 to Thursday 5 September, Russia launched a new massive attack by Shahed kamikaze drones against Ukraine. Eight of them flew over Belarusian airspace, two of which were shot down by Belarusian forces near Gomel, 30 km from the border with Ukraine, the Belarusian Hajun Project military monitoring group reported on Thursday.
The two devices were intercepted by fighter jets at around 1:30 a.m. local time. The incident appears to embarrass the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, whose country has served as a rear base for Russian troops since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a statement published on Telegram on Thursday, the Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander of the Air Force and Air Defense, Colonel Sergei Frolov, denounced a violation of airspace by drones. “intruder”. However, he carefully avoided specifying that they were Russian. “The decision was made to destroy them (…). This is under investigation.”he added. Russia had not reacted officially as of Thursday evening.
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Noise “too loud” to be ignored
This is not the first time that Moscow has violated Belarusian airspace. According to the Belarusian Hajun Project, an independent military monitoring group, “Russian Shahed-131/136 drones have been systematically flying over Belarus since the beginning of July”. He also recalls that, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, “at least 721 missiles were launched from the territory of Belarus against Ukraine or were launched from Russia, crossing Belarusian airspace”.
These last two months, “more than twenty drones” have already entered its airspace, specifies the Monde the Belarusian Hajun Project. So far, none of these incidents have been the subject of any official reaction, apart from “Propaganda’s attempts to deny everything”. But those that occurred between September 4 and 5 over Gomel, a city of half a million inhabitants, could hardly be passed over in silence. “The noise was too loud, explains the Belarusian Hajun Project. There is no doubt that if the drones had been shot down over a less urbanized area, there would have been no official reaction.
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The Belarusian Air Force began shooting down some of these drones a few days ago. On August 29, during a previous attack by Moscow on Ukraine, a Belarusian fighter jet destroyed a Shahed drone that was entering the airspace in the Yelsk region in the middle of the night. In total, at least three Shahed drones have been destroyed so far by the Minsk military, according to the Belarusian Hajun Project. This is believed to be a security measure: “These drones flying over Belarus obviously represent a significant danger. The Belarusian air force seems to shoot them down to prevent a Shahed from falling on a house, for example.”
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