A senior Belarusian official said the small Moscow-allied country bordering Ukraine has as many as 1.5 million combat-ready personnel outside its armed forces.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko supports his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in his war on Ukraine, which has been going on for a year, as he allowed him to invade Ukraine from Belarusian territory and train recently mobilized forces inside Belarus.
This month, Lukashenko ordered the formation of a new 150,000-strong volunteer land defense force.
He emphasized that his country’s army would not fight unless Belarus was attacked.
“The structure of the organizations, not the armed forces, will reach 1.5 million people if martial law is declared and the economy is put in a state of war,” Belta news agency quoted the Secretary of the Security Council in Belarus, Alexander Volfovich, as saying, Saturday.
Belarus has a population of regarding 9.3 million people.
The military balance report issued by the International Institute for Strategic Studies stated that the strength of the army in Belarus amounts to regarding 48,000 soldiers, and regarding 12,000 soldiers in the border guards.
