Belarus claims to have 1.5 million potential soldiers outside armed services

• President Alexander Lukashenko has backed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in his year-long conflict with Ukraine.
• Lukashenko directed the development of a new volunteer territorial defense force of up to 150,000 individuals.
• The country’s professional army has approximately 48,000 men and approximately 12,000 state border troops.

Belarus, a small Russian ally bordering Ukraine, has up to 1.5 million potential military men outside of its armed services, according to a senior official quoted on Saturday.

President Alexander Lukashenko has backed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in his year-long conflict with Ukraine, including by permitting Moscow to invade from Belarusian territory and train newly mobilized forces in Belarus.

This month, Lukashenko directed the development of a new volunteer territorial defense force of up to 150,000 individuals. He has stated that his army will only fight if Belarus is attacked.

“The structures of the organizations, not the Armed Forces, will amount to somewhere up to 1.5 million people in the event of a declaration of martial law and the switch of the economy to a war mode,” said State Secretary of the Security Council Alexander Volfovich.

Belarus has a population of approximately 9.3 million people. According to the 2022 International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance, the country’s professional army has approximately 48,000 men and approximately 12,000 state border troops.

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