INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ukraine on Saturday said Russia was aiming to drag its ally Belarus into the war, after reporting that missiles which struck a border region
near Kyiv came from Belarusian territory.Twenty rockets fired from Belarusian territory and the air targeted the village of Desna in the
northern Chernigiv region at around 05:00 a.m
(02:00 GMT) on Saturday, Ukraine's northern military command wrote in a statement on Facebook.Ukraine's intelligence service said six
Russian bombers fired 12 cruise missiles from the town of Petrykaw in southern Belarus after taking off from a Russian airbase.It added that
Russian forces hit targets in the northern Kyiv and Sumy regions.The Ukrainian intelligence service said on Telegram that the action was
"directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine."The "massive bombardment" struck
infrastructure but had not caused any casualties, the Ukrainian army added.Desna, a small village with a pre-war population of around 7,500
people, lies 70 kilometers (43 miles) to the north of Kyiv and a similar distance to the south of Ukraine's border with Belarus.The strikes
come as Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Belarusian counterpart and close ally Alexander Lukashenko in St
Petersburg on Saturday.Moscow's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to visit Belarus on Thursday and Friday.Belarus has provided
logistical support to Russia's invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb
24, especially in the first weeks of the offensive, although it officially remains a non-belligerent at this stage.The country, ruled by
Lukashenko with an iron fist since 1994, has also been targeted by Western sanctions aimed at Russia over its assault on Ukraine.Lukashenko,
67, has accused the West of being "at war with Russia" and elevating "Nazism to the rank of state ideology" over its military and financial
support for Ukraine.He has also demanded that Belarus be included in any talks and a deal to end the conflict.Belarus had previously been
hit by Western sanctions after the authorities carried out a heavy-handed repression of widespread protests following a 2020 election that
the opposition said Lukashenko had stolen.Putin's steadfast support for Lukashenko helped the man dubbed "Europe's last dictator" to
overcome the challenge to his leadership.Opposition leaders who fled Belarus in the wake of the crackdown, including Svetlana Tikhanovskaya,
have sought refuge in Western countries.Sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who sought the protection of staff at last year's Tokyo Olympics
after saying she feared being forcibly returned to Belarus, received refuge in neighboring Poland.The forced diversion of a Lithuania-bound
plane to Belarus to arrest opposition activist Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega in 2021 further soured relations
between Minsk and the West.
