In its October 11 Russian offensive campaign assessment, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote that Russia is likely extracting ammunition and other matériel from Belarusian storage bases, “which is incompatible with the notion that Russian forces are setting conditions for a ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus.”
- On 11 October, the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reported a train with 492 tons of ammunition from the Belarusian 43rd Missile and Ammunition Storage Arsenal in Gomel arrived at the Kirovska Railway Station in occupied Crimea on an unspecified recent past date.
- According to HUR, Belarusian officials plan to send an additional 13 trains with weapons, equipment, ammunition, and other unspecified matériel from five different Belarusian bases to the Kamenska (Kamensk-Shakhtinsky) and Marchevo (Taganrog) railway stations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast on an unspecified future date.
ISW says that open-source social media footage supports this HUR report as geolocated footage showed “at least two Belarusian trains transporting Belarusian T-72 tanks and Ural military trucks in Minsk and Tor-M2 surface-to-air missile launchers in Orsha (Vitebsk Oblast)” on October 11.
https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1579778054741954560
“Belarusian equipment movements into Russia indicate that Russian and Belarusian forces likely are not establishing assembly areas in Belarus. Belarusian equipment and supply movements to Crimea and Rostov Oblast indicate that Russian forces are less confident about the security of Russian ground lines of communication running through northern and western Luhansk Oblast given the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there. Ukraine’s General Staff reiterated that it monitors Belarus and has not observed indicators of the formation of offensive groups in Belarus on October 11. Russian and or Belarusian forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from Belarus, as ISW has previously assessed,” the ISW report reads.
