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February 05, 2022   WASHINGTON  

Russia sent two long-range, nuclear-capable bombers to patrol over western Belarus, Russia’s ally and Ukraine’s neighbor to the north, as the first U.S. troops arrived in Poland.

The Russian Tu-22M3 bombers were accompanied by Su-30SM fighter jets from the Russian and Belarusian air forces and trained for four hours in the third mission of its kind in the last month.

Belarus has grown increasingly close to Russia since the West imposed sanctions on the country following the 2020 elections, which were widely seen as fraudulent, and the subsequent crackdown on peaceful protesters.

On Saturday, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko praised the Russian-led security alliance, saying it showed its ability to deploy quickly when it sent troops to Kazakhstan last month to put down fuel price protests that had turned violent.

"While they [NATO] will be still getting prepared to send some troops here, we will already stand at the English Channel, and they know it," he said in a reference to Western allies, in an interview on Russian state TV.

Lukashenko, however, downplayed the threat of war in Ukraine, saying, "there is no one there to fight us."

Next week, two prominent European leaders are scheduled to travel to the capitals of Russia and Ukraine for talks with their counterparts about diplomatic measures to ease the growing tensions surrounding Moscow’s potential invasion of Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron is due in Moscow on Monday and Kyiv on Tuesday. The following week, Germany’s Olaf Scholz is set to visit Kyiv on Feb. 14 and Moscow on Feb. 15.

Macron spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and NATO head Jens Stoltenberg on Saturday. In separate conversations each agreed with Macron for the need "to continue working to find through dialogue a path to de-escalation” and that NATO must remain “united in the face of Russian aggression.”