By Simplicius
Jun 26, 2026
Today Zelensky announced a new series of “revelations” regarding the ongoing Belarus-vectored escalation.
Zelensky now claims that Ukraine has detected a plethora of other war preparations that Russia is allegedly making in Belarus, near the Ukrainian border, presumably for the future invasion from Belarus that Zelensky had already hinted at months ago was being gradually prepared by Russia.
Our intelligence has obtained important findings regarding the situation in Crimea and in our other territories currently under Russian occupation. Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service has obtained data indicating that the crisis with fuel, military logistics, and governance in… pic.twitter.com/euwZJCuzoq
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 25, 2026
Specifically, on that topic he writes:
Separately, Oleh Luhovskyi reported on measures being carried out in Belarus, under obvious Russian influence, to prepare for a potential expansion of aggression against Ukraine. Along our state border in Belarus, the construction of road infrastructure and storage bases for ammunition and fuel and lubricants is nearing completion. These facilities have no purpose other than a military one. These are the border directions of Kobryn–Kovel, Ivanava–Manevychi, Luninets–Sarny, Rečyca–Korosten, and Homieĺ–Chernihiv. We know that Russian documents describe this specifically in the context of the tasks of the so-called “SVO.”
Belarus has received the necessary signals from Ukraine regarding this activity, as well as regarding all other formats of its collaboration with Russia in the interests of prolonging and scaling up the war. Belarus knows what steps it must take for peace. The development of border infrastructure for aggression from Belarus must be stopped. It is the Belarusian side that must take steps toward de-escalation and peace. Thank you to everyone who helps us protect lives and our independence! Glory to Ukraine!
To corroborate these “findings” he posted several slides claiming to show this military infrastructure that Belarus has been building up at the behest of Russia “in the direction of Ukraine”:
Keep in mind, none of this should necessarily be treated with outright skepticism. For all we know, Russia truly has been making such preparations—after all, it certainly would be logical for Russia to finish what it started in 2022, and cut off or capture Kiev for good. And for those skeptical: why would Russia have any moral, ethical, or legal qualms against doing so now if it happily launched an offensive from Belarus just four years earlier in 2022?
The only skepticism comes from the understanding that Zelensky is now desperately searching for a new avenue of provocation in order to widen the conflict, and so for this reason alone this information should be treated cautiously. Also, these could just be long term Russian projects for general regional security, given the obvious understanding that the West is itself militarizing all along the Union State’s borders.
It is interesting that just yesterday, Zelensky announced Belarus had “complied” with his one week ultimatum and had “shut down” the signal repeaters on the Ukraine-Belarussian border.
Read the full story on the above.
The reason this is interesting is because suddenly, as soon as the relay towers were “shut down” according to him, he immediately launched into complaints about an entirely new scheme of “Russian escalations”, in this case the so-called military “preparations” and ammo bases being built on the Belarussian side of the border. It all has the feel of something rehearsed, like Zelensky is going through a kind of multi-phase operational script.
Lending credence to that notion is his announcement of a new “40-day operation” that is meant as a new phase of the recent theater that Zelensky has been crafting together with his European partners:
It’s clear that virtually everything Ukraine has been doing vis-a-vis long-range strikes against Russian refineries, Crimean “drone scare” and “isolation crisis”, to the new Belarussian flashpoint is a carefully crafted psychological operation. Its purpose? Why, Zelensky states it openly: to force Russia into ending the war.
But why would the “victor” who’s doing such tremendous damage to his enemy as to virtually bring him to his knees seek such a premature conclusion to the hostilities? If you’re winning so devastatingly as Ukraine claims to be doing, then why not defeat your opponent in full rather than simply force him into a rushed ceasefire?
Even Germany’s Chancellor Merz has now begun virtually begging Russia to freeze the frontline immediately at its current place:
Why would that be?
The answer is again clear: Europe is running out of political capital to keep Ukraine afloat. For all its wondrous drone-tech-achieved battlefield surprises, Ukraine simply cannot sustain this unprecedentedly expensive war effort.
All signs point to this:
The first tranche of the €90 billion aid package for Ukraine will no longer include €5.9 billion for drone production, Euractiv reports.
Kiev will receive €3.2 billion in direct budget support.
The EU will purchase the drones itself to avoid corruption schemes involving the Ukrainian side.
We’ve seen that the Europeans are simply pushing their countries and political orders to the very brink merely to maintain Ukraine’s battlefield status quo, but the cracks are turning into massive fractures as we’ve now seen with Starmer’s collapse; Merz and co. are not far behind.
As for the Belarus situation, Lukashenko himself stated that if Ukraine attacks Belarus the nature of the conflict “will change instantly”:
Belarus says it’s being dragged into the war the West unleashed in Ukraine
“Attempts are being made to drag out and even expand the conflict unleashed by the West in Ukraine. Today we clearly feel an obvious attempt to drag Belarus into this war,” said Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin.
And oddly enough, Commander-in-Chief Syrsky announced that Ukraine now needs to accelerate mobilization in order to form new brigades for the Belarussian border:
From the above:
Against the background of the threat from Belarus, there is a need to create new brigades in order to ensure that this possible offensive is repulsed. About this in the comments section LIGA.net for analysis, the commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Syrsky told.
He clarified that Russia—which according to Ukraine is losing more men than it can recruit—is somehow managing to create several new divisions and five brigades, which Ukraine now needs to match:
“The enemy, by the way, has adjusted its plans and is going to create new divisions and five brigades this year. We are forced to respond to such actions. In war, you either seize the initiative or give it up. The third is not given, ” emphasized Syrsky.
This all brings us back to the main point: That Russia continues to increase pressure on Ukraine in the actual war, while Ukraine is forced to respond asymmetrically via hybrid methods, i.e. psyops.
As we have been writing here recently, Russia has infact initiated a systematic campaign of destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure that had previously appeared to be off-limits.
From Ukrainian channels:
Over 150 gas stations were destroyed in the past two months—most of them in the past couple weeks—according to Ukraine’s own former Minister of Infrastructure:
Russia has destroyed more than 150 gas stations in Ukraine over the last two months
▪️The former Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Pivovarsky, also reported that oil depots and other fuel infrastructure facilities are subjected to attacks almost every week.
▪️In addition, he reported that the Ukrainian market is already preparing for a difficult winter. Reserves are being formed, logistics capacities are being booked, contracts are being concluded, and as a result, fuel prices are also rising.
The sheer number of videos showing new such instances has been overwhelming the networks.
The Russian Armed Forces have launched massive strikes on Ukraine, destroying the enemy’s infrastructure and logistics in 6 regions
⚡️ The strikes hit the Poltava, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Sumy regions.
💥 Many industrial facilities have been hit, including factories used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, oil depots, gas stations, fuel warehouses, and power substations. In some regions, power outages have been reported.
💥 Strikes have also been carried out on railway infrastructure, bridges, and dozens of enemy cargo transports, which will severely hamper the logistics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ militants.
A new report of 4 gas stations being wiped out in Sumy just yesterday with attendant photos:
Strike on a fuel station in Sumy today around 5 PM, — Kordon Media
Yesterday and today, 4 gas stations were destroyed in Sumy.
One such gas station hit was captured in visceral detail:
In fact, the above OSINT blogger who has lived in Sumy for a long time reports that things are going downhill for the AFU in the Sumy region:
As well as:
“Absolutely, the information I heard through some connections that the Russians are in the forests north of Sumy, is true. It is now common knowledge throughout the city that several Russian groups are active not far from Sumy. Leaving aside Russia taking villages, many areas of Sumy forest are pretty much grey zones.”
This is interesting in light of Ukraine’s announcement yesterday of a mandatory evacuation for a dozen border settlements in Chernigov, which is sandwiched between Belarus and Sumy:
Ukrainian authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders for 12 border settlements of Chernihiv Oblast, including 2 that border Belarus.
— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) June 24, 2026
Approximately 1,000 civilians remain in these 12 villages, including 120 children. Evacuations will begin on July 1 and are expected to… pic.twitter.com/0cQpM59tGm
Russia has been making a lot of “silent advances” that go unnoticed along the entire northern border recently, particularly in the Kharkov region. Syrsky himself dismissed these as merely Russia’s attempts to gain traction “somewhere” after having failed their main assaults on the primary battle lines—but even if that were true, why wouldn’t it be a good strategy to advance wherever you can in order to stretch your opponent to the breaking point?
Even as of this writing, Russia has launched another successful strike on Kiev, though for some reason we expect that the images of massive flames and pillars of smoke will not be broadcast as enthusiastically as those rare hits in Moscow:
And this gets to our point: that Russia has been systematically working out Ukraine’s infrastructure which is getting very little notice compared to the manufactured Ukrainian campaign and exaggerated panic tactics about “shortages” and “evacuations”, etc.
This is essentially Russia’s plan: continue stripping Ukraine of its resources while bankrupting the EU’s ability to provide meaningful support for Ukraine. Is it a foolproof plan? No. Is it absolutely guaranteed to work? No. But it is far more likely to go Russia’s way than the recent Ukrainian theatrics going Zelensky’s way.
As a fitting curiosity to end on, Russian outlet MASH claims that a hacker group has successfully penetrated Ukraine’s secret casualty lists and revealed that the AFU has lost ~2.4 million total soldiers:
Ukraine has lost approximately 2.4 million soldiers since the start of Russia's operation in Ukraine in 2022
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) June 25, 2026
Russian hackers PalachPro and the NoName057(16) group have breached databases belonging to the Ukrainian General Staff and Ukraines territorial recruitment centers… https://t.co/934VwEgxO4 pic.twitter.com/J2J4ay5AY2
“The resources we have received contain huge lists of dead Ukrainian soldiers. Their deaths were recorded not only on the battlefield, but also in hospitals,” the hackers said.
It is noted that in most cases, some kind of “illness” was indicated as the cause of death of personnel in the rear areas, without additional details. The deaths of thousands of young men in rear-line hospitals under the same diagnosis seems strange, the appeal says.
This appears to confirm that the 2.4M number is purely KIA rather than “total casualties” which would include wounded. Certainly it will be much too high a number to be believable for many people, but the way things have gone it doesn’t seem totally out of the realm of possibility, either.
Ukraine has always utilized psyops like this to demoralize the Russian side, but as most know, the stodgy Russian MOD has never really bothered to craft such “information campaigns” despite many on the Russian side urging them to do so. As such, this type of release is unlikely to be a pure psyop from the Russian side, as the MOD doesn’t seem to care to “convince” anyone of Ukraine’s losses, just as it never cares to “show” anyone BDA photos after strikes—the MOD has never bothered proving anything of this sort during the war.
But you decide what you want to believe.
A parting video: We’ve seen many of these recent hits by Russian drones on Ukrainian power transformers, but the latest shows how things have developed and evolved. Ukraine began to cover their units in cement sarcophagi but Russian drones still found their way in. Now they’ve added a gauntlet of nets and other obstacles, but watch how delicately the Russian drones continue wending their way through—bonus videos of hits on a gas storage site and another power transformer, as well:
The music is fitting—it is truly a choreographed dance by the nimble drone op.
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