Russia today warned the West and Ukraine of “catastrophic consequences” if Kiev moves against Russia’s close ally Belarus, making clear it will intervene to defend a country in which it has regularly deployed nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that Moscow was concerned about what she described as increasingly “provocative” activity on the border with Belarus, noting that she did not rule out that there could be attempts at escalation in the region.

Days after Ukraine’s surprise August 6 cross-border attack on Russia’s Kursk region, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko – a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin – said, without providing details, that Kiev may be considering attacking Belarus.

Later, Minsk, which has accused Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) of violating its airspace, said it was sending additional troops to its border with Ukraine, though Kiev noted that it had not detected any major changes in the border region.

“We take due account of the information we received about the intensification of the activities of Ukrainian forces in the border zone,” Zakharova noted.

“We see these events ourselves and are aware of constant attempts by the Ukrainian side to use drones and send terrorists into the republic,” she added.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said last month that the country “has never taken and will never take any hostile actions against the Belarusian people.”

In an explicit reference to the Ukrainian attack in Kursk, Zakharova noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had shown himself capable of what she called “reckless steps”, accusing him of coordinating with Washington ahead of the November US presidential election.

“Therefore, according to this logic, we do not exclude the possibility that these destructive forces could set in motion and escalate the situation in the region,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman stressed.

Russia and Belarus are part of a “Union State” and have undertaken to jointly defend their common borders, Zakharova also stressed, noting that a joint regional military group has been deployed in Belarus along with Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

“The practical implementation of any scenarios aggressive towards Minsk will have disastrous consequences not only for Ukraine, but also for its sponsors,” she concluded.