KYIV, Ukraine — Belarus’ exiled opposition leader visited Kyiv on Monday as the Ukrainian capital cleaned up after Russia’s biggest missile attack of the year, and world leaders kept a close eye on how much support the Belarusian government is ready to provide for Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.
Russia and its ally Belarus held joint nuclear drills last week, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has increasingly warned in recent days that Belarus could provide a launchpad for Russia to open a new front in northern Ukraine. Some Russia troops entered Ukraine from Belarusian territory in Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
In a further sign that concerns about any Belarusian role are increasing, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke by phone with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday, their first call since the all-out war began.
With that conflict more than four years old, the Russian army is locked in a hard and costly slog on the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line that mostly snakes through eastern and southern Ukraine.
“Russia hit a dead-end on the battlefield, so it terrorizes Ukraine with deliberate strikes on city centers,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said in a post on X, in the wake of the weekend barrage that killed two people and damaged buildings across the Ukrainian capital.
With American-made air defense missiles in short supply because of the Iran war, Russian missiles are harder for Ukraine to stop. Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to stop the fighting made little progress and have now stalled.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who arrived by train for her first visit to Kyiv on Monday, said that France wants to send a warning to Belarus.
“The main goal — to warn Lukashenko that dragging Belarus into the war would be unacceptable,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“Lukashenko’s regime knows well what needs to be done to improve ties with the European Union, but it isn’t happening, instead hybrid attacks, nuclear blackmail and threats to the entire region continue,” she said.
Lukashenko, who has governed Belarus with an iron fist for more than three decades, relies on the Kremlin for cheap energy, loans and other support.
In the call, Macron “underscored the risks for Belarus of allowing itself to be dragged into Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine,” according to a presidential aide in the French leader’s office who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with the presidential palace’s practices.
Macron also spoke Sunday with Zelenskyy.
A terse readout released by the Belarusian presidential press service said that the call took place “on the French side’s initiative” and that the two leaders discussed “regional issues” and the relations of Belarus with the European Union and France.
Sunday’s heavy bombardment included Russia’s powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile, which can carry multiple warheads. Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted it can travel up to 10 times the speed of sound and evade air defense systems.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence services had received tipoffs from the United States and European countries that Russia was preparing to launch an Oreshnik.
In addition to the two deaths, at least 87 people were wounded in Kyiv, including three children, in the barrage, Zelenskyy said Monday. Twenty-one people were hospitalized.
The intense assault damaged buildings across the city, including near government offices, residential buildings, schools and a market, Ukrainian authorities said. Shattered glass still littered sidewalks on Monday.
“Every such strike only demonstrates yet again the true nature of Putin’s regime — the regime that doesn’t recognize human life, international law, or borders,” Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader in exile, wrote on Telegram after witnessing the attack’s aftermath in Kyiv.
In other developments Monday:
Russia’s Federal Security Service said that divers found magnetic mines attached to the hull of a liquefied petroleum gas tanker in the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga. The tanker Arrhenius was bound for Samsun, Turkey, it said, adding that the limpet mines were made in a NATO member country. Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile hit a business in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Derhachi, killing two people and wounding 19 others Monday, Kharkiv regional administration head Oleh Syniehubov said. Seventeen people were hospitalized.
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Associated Press writer John Leicester contributed to this report from Paris.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
