How much longer does he have? Putin’s clock is ticking for Lukashenko in Belarus.

Ukraine’s daring invasion of the Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts in Russia has Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko feeling the heat. After all, the Kremlin puppet has been in cahoots with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special military operation from the outset. Is he next?

The chickens have come home to roost, Belarusian style.

According to Lukashenko, the only mistake Russia and Belarus made in 2014 and 2015 was that they didn’t resolve the Ukraine issue when “Ukraine had no army and wasn’t prepared.”

Prior to the February 2022 Russian invasion, Lukashenko authorized Putin to stage personnel and equipment within the confines of Belarus. Minsk also allowed Russia to launch ground and air assault attacks to capture Kyiv — and subsequently permitted Russian ballistic missiles to be launched from Belarusian territory.

Putin’s wounded soldiers were evacuated to hospitals in Belarus. Combat-damaged Russian equipment was repaired there, and the Belarussian Army supplied T-72 tanks to the Russian invaders. Belarus was as much part of the invasion as it could be without actually sending in troops.

That was then, and this is now. As the Ukrainians seize land and threaten to encircle entire Russian units within Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts, Lukashenko may not be feeling as confident as he once did about the war’s final outcome. 

He is now looking for an off-ramp. Last week, he urged Russia and Ukraine to negotiate a settlement, to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus, claiming absurdly that “Ukraine has been de-Nazified,” implying that the oft-stated goal of the operation, to obliterate imaginary Ukrainian Nazis, had already been accomplished. 

Lukashenko continues to blame the West for the war, stating “neither the Ukrainian people, nor the Russians, nor the Belarusians need [this conflict].” He went on to proclaim that “Ukrainians will end up together with Belarusians and Russians, because they will soon understand that the West simply used them and then screwed them over.” Not likely.

Even as he attempted to channel such bravado, Lukashenko alleged that Ukrainian drones had crossed into Belarusian airspace on Aug. 9. He described the incident as a provocation, noting that the drones were intercepted by his country’s air defenses. 

Lukashenko says he has deployed nearly one-third of his army to the border with Ukraine. He plainly fears Kyiv, claiming that Ukraine “keeps more than 120,000 military forces” near the Belarusian border. He brashly proclaimed that Minsk would not allow Ukrainian troops to “trample on our country.” 

Not so fast, though. Lukashenko may not be able to back up his words. According to a source within the Belarusian Ministry of Defense, Belarus may once again be pulling military equipment from its active duty units — tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery — and transferring them to Moscow to make up for critical shortages inflicted upon the Russians by Ukraine. 

The Russian Army has been reduced to pulling Korean War-era T-55 tanks out from storage to provide armor, indirect fire support via its 100-millimeter main gun, and thrusting 18-year-old conscripts into the fight. Belarus, as a result, gets militarily weaker every day that Putin’s war continues.

Should Putin’s regime collapse, then down goes Lukashenko, and he knows it. Minsk’s version of “Baghdad Bob” has suddenly come to the realization that it is in his best interest to bring this matter to a peaceful conclusion as quickly as possible. 

Poland is lurking over his shoulder, having signed a $10 billion agreement with Boeing for 96 Apache attack helicopters. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the rightfully elected president of Belarus and opposition leader who now lives in exile in Lithuania, lives rent free in his head as well.

Lukashenko is playing every card in his hand, likely taking direction from Putin as well. The mobilization and deployment of the Belarusian military to the border is likely a demonstration to force Ukraine to reposition forces from the Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts — thus taking pressure off embattled Russian defenders and their supply lines.

There may be an alternative motive as well: self-preservation. According to Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, there is a “partisan” movement of opponents of the Belarusian regime that has deployed its people throughout the country to thwart the deployment of Russian military forces inside Belarus in preparation for an invasion of Ukraine. 

Also complicating the matter, Viacorka states “we have seen growing pressure from commanders of military units not to intervene in the fighting in Ukraine.”

Pushing regular army troops out from Minsk also lessens the possibility of a military coup against Lukashenko. Dissension within the ranks is an immediate threat to him. Senior Belarusian military officials have resigned, and hundreds of military-aged men have fled the country. 

Lukashenko is not a popular man in his own country. In fact, hundreds of Belarusians have taken up arms fighting alongside their Ukrainian brethren. Visegrád 24 recently reported a tank with the traditional white-red-white flag of Belarus, associated with protests against Lukashenko’s regime, was seen in Kursk, where Belarusian volunteers are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainian troops against Russia.

Last Saturday offered insight into Lukashenko’s growing paranoia. When asked by a Gorodishche resident about his decision to run for a seventh term as president, Lukashenko responded, “You should get used to the fact that the president will be different. I’m not saying that I’m going to leave you tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and so on. But everything happens in life. You should get used to the fact that I won’t be around forever, just like all of you.”

That is not dictator-talk. In a world of survive or perish, Lukashenko may have just foreshadowed his own transition out of power, which will surely include conditions for his own golden parachute. Unlike his Ukrainian counterpart, flight is his most likely course of action to avoid a fate like that of Benito Mussolini or Nicolae Ceausescu.

Putin’s useful Belarusian idiot may be experiencing buyer’s remorse. His usefulness is coming to an end — and in Putin’s mafia-run state, that is not good.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.