Lukashenko's border troop claim and Kyiv's denial, 19 August 2024
A look back at the competing claims over Belarusian deployments and the Kursk prisoners reported in the days before 19 August 2024.
What was happening on the Belarus–Ukraine border as of 19 August 2024? Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reported on 18 August that nearly one third of the Belarusian Army had been deployed along the frontier. He presented the move as a response to Ukraine stationing more than 120,000 troops at the border.
Kyiv disputed the account. Ukraine said it had observed no movement of Belarusian troops, leaving the two sides with directly opposed descriptions of the situation along the border.
Prisoners from Kursk
A few days earlier, on 14 August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had captured more than 100 Russian soldiers in the previous 24 hours during their offensive in Kursk Oblast. He added that he was open to exchanging the prisoners for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Taken together, the reports from 14 and 18 August showed two fronts of attention: a contested claim about Belarus, and a Ukrainian offensive inside Russia that had produced prisoners who could be offered in exchange for captured Ukrainians.
