Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday publicly showed a map of Ukraine, where arrows indicate the directions of a possible Russian landing in the Black Sea port city of Odessa and link up with the Russian base in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.
During the Security Council meeting, Lukashenko, with the help of a pointer, explained to defense officials why missiles were launched from the territory of Belarus toward Ukraine.
Lukashenko revealed where Belarusian and Russian troops were stationed along the border with Ukraine. According to him, Belarusian reinforced units were in the western part, near Brest and Pinsk. Russian forces were stationed in the east. Lukashenko also repeated the story about missile systems allegedly deployed by Ukraine and aimed at Belarus.
According to Lukashenko, he received information from Russian intelligence that Ukraine wants to launch a missile attack on Belarus. And as a preventive measure, he decided to strike first. Lukashenko did not explain why rockets continue to fly from Belarus every day, moreover, in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities of Ukraine, killing dozens of civilians every day.
He also showed a map of hostilities, which marked the main directions of strikes. The map shows the advancing troops striking at Kyiv from the Chernobyl zone and through the Chernihiv region in Ukraine's north. The Russian army is also expected to advance to the Zhytomyr region.
From the northeast, the strikes go through Sumy in the Cherkasy-Poltava region and through Kharkiv to the Dnieper. From the territory controlled by the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), there are planned attacks on the Dnieper region and toward Melitopol.
Two assaults come out of Crimea, on Melitopol and Mykolaiv. Finally, another arrow shows a sea strike against Odessa and further toward Transnistria, where a large Russian base is located.
Transnistria, also known as Prednistrovie, mainly covers a thin strip of Moldovan land along the left bank of Dniester River. Following clashes in 1992 and Soviet intervention on behalf of pro-Moscow and pro-Russian local groups, the region declared independence from Moldova and remains a frozen conflict zone ever since.
Since reports on a likely Russian invasion on Ukraine broke out, a naval landing to Odessa from Russian-dominated Black Sea and occupied Crimea, and link up with Transnistria was cited among possible invasion routes. The Black Sea port city, which has a diverse population using Russian as their primary language, had witnessed both pro-Maidan and pro-Moscow riots in 2014. It is often cited among key targets for Moscow to cut off Ukraine's direct access to seas, gain a strategically important site for Black Sea domination and Crimea's security, and establish a pro-Russian southern and eastern governance.
The ambassador of Belarus to Moldova was summoned to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry for an explanation about the map. Belarusian Ambassador Anatoly Kalinin said that the information was incorrectly presented by representatives of the Belarusian Defense Ministry, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry reported.