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Minsk, Moscow work together to keep tabs on Ukrainians crossing borders — Lukashenko

According to the Belarusian president, even authorities in countries friendly to Ukraine, namely Poland, have started "to capture" Ukrainian citizens to send them "to the frontline"

MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Minsk provides Moscow with information on Ukrainian nationals wishing to travel to Russia via Belarus, the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"We neither seize them at the border nor hold them back," he said. "We keep an eye on them and monitor their movement. If some of them head to Russia, we immediately pass this information to [Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director] Alexander Bortnikov so they are under supervision," Lukashenko added.

According to him, even authorities in countries friendly to Ukraine, namely Poland, have started "to capture" Ukrainian citizens to send them "to the frontline," which is why "scores of Ukrainians" are traveling to Belarus before moving on to other countries. "Some think about settling here with their families, <...> while others are heading to the West through the Belarusian border. We don’t plan to catch them; let the Ukrainians sort this out themselves," the Belarusian president stressed.

Ukraine announced a general mobilization in February 2022, which it has extended periodically ever since, with the country’s authorities doing their utmost to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft. Videos regularly surface on social media showing conscription officers forcefully taking people away and engaging in clashes with recruits-to-be. Meanwhile, draft-age men are doing their best to leave the country, often risking their lives. On May 18, a law tightening mobilization rules came into force in Ukraine, making it possible to call up hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians into the army. On June 10, Secretary of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence Roman Kostenko said that the mobilization rate quadrupled after the law had come into force.

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Belarus Alexander Lukashenko

Middle East conflict

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