NEW: Senior #Kremlin officials continue holding high-level meetings with Belarusian national leadership – activity that could be setting conditions for a Russian attack against #Ukraine from #Belarus, although not necessarily and not in the coming weeks. isw.pub/UkrWar01192023 
2/ Russian Def. Minister Sergey #Shoigu and Belarusian Def. Minister Viktor Khrenin in a 19 JAN call discussed unspecified bilateral military cooperation, unspecified strategic deterrence measures, &“progress in preparing” the joint Russian-Belarusian Regional Grouping of Troops.
3/ Russian Foreign Minister Sergey #Lavrov also met Belarusian President Alexander #Lukashenko in Minsk and discussed an unspecified Russo-Belarusian “shared vision” for #Russia’s war in #Ukraine on January 19.
4/ Lavrov and Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergey Aleinik discussed how Russia and Belarus can defeat an ongoing Western hybrid war against the states and signed an unspecified memorandum of cooperation on “ensuring biological security.”
5/ This memo could be a leading indicator of the intensification of an existing Russian information operation falsely accusing #Ukraine of developing chemical/biochemical weapons in alleged US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that was part of the Kremlin‘s pretext for the 2022 invasion.
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