The war in Ukraine is getting dangerously close to Belarus, Moscow's number one ally, although its troops have so far cautiously stayed out of the conflict. On the night of Wednesday, September 4, Russia launched another massive kamikaze drone attack using Shahed drones against Ukraine. Eight of them flew over Belarusian airspace, two of which were shot down by Belarusian forces near Gomel, 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, the military monitoring group Belarusian Hajun Project reported on Thursday.
Both drones were intercepted by fighter jets at around 1:30 am local time. The incident appears to be causing embarrassment for Alexander Lukashenko's regime, 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 Thursday on Telegram, chief of general staff and first deputy commander of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense, Colonel Sergey Frolov, denounced a violation of airspace by "intruder" drones. However, he carefully avoided specifying that they were Russian. "A decision was made to destroy them (...). An investigation into this matter is underway," he added. As of Thursday evening, Russia had not officially responded.
This is not the first time 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 into Belarus since the beginning of July." It also pointed out that, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, "at least 721 missiles have been launched from the territory of Belarus on Ukrainian cities."
Over the past two months, "more than 20 Russian Shahed-131/136 drones" have already entered its airspace, according to the Belarusian Hajun Project. To date, none of these incidents have been the subject of any official reaction, apart from "propaganda attempts to deny everything." However, those that occurred between September 4 and 5 over Gomel, a city of half a million inhabitants, couldn't be ignored. "The resonance was too great," explained the Belarusian Hajun Project. "There's no doubt that if the drones had been shot down over less urbanized territory, there would've been no official reaction."
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 had entered airspace in the Yelsk region in the middle of the night. In total, at least three Shahed drones have so far been destroyed by the Minsk army, according to data from the Belarusian Hajun Project. This appears to be a security measure: "It is clear that these drones flying over Belarus represent a significant danger. The Belarusian Air Force appears to shoot them down to prevent a Shahed from landing on a house, for example."
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