Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden warns Russia could resort to chemical weapons; Zelensky says some cities bombed beyond recognition

The Belarusian Defense Ministry said it had withdrawn troops that were deployed near the Ukrainian border, according to statements posted on its Telegram channel on Monday, after the Ukrainian military said Russia was trying to bring Belarus into the war on its side.

Ukrainian officials and Western observers have suggested Russia is trying to draw Belarus into its invasion of Ukraine, including by attacking Belarus from Ukrainian territory as a provocation.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, appears to be resisting Moscow’s pressure to join the war, military experts say, though he has let Russia use Belarus as a staging area for troops and a missile launch site.

A new Russian-Belarusian offensive from Belarus, which is directly north of Ukraine, would be unlikely to succeed, military experts say. The invaders “would face staunch Ukrainian resistance and similar, if not greater, morale and logistics issues to Russian forces elsewhere,” experts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said this week.

A military failure for Belarus could spell political trouble for Lukashenko, who has sought to violently quell popular protests against his authoritarian regime at home.

The former diplomats and defense officials who visited the U.S. Naval Observatory in early 2015 were seeking a receptive audience — and they found one in Vice President Joe Biden. Russia had taken over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea the previous year and fueled a bloody separatist uprising in the country’s east, and the officials urgently wanted President Barack Obama to send Ukraine advanced antitank missiles, called Javelins.

Not only would that help repel the Russian-armed separatists, they insisted, but it would serve as a powerful symbol of America’s determination to stand by a former Soviet republic that was moving steadily toward the West.

“He said, ‘Okay, I’ll go down the hall’ — meaning to the Oval Office — ‘and make the case,’ ” recalled Jan Lodal, a former senior Pentagon official who helped organize the meeting. But Lodal said Biden added with a smile: “You’ve got to remember my first name: It’s ‘Vice.’ Spelled V-I-C-E. I’m the highest paid staff officer in the government.”

Sure enough, Obama rejected the request, fearing that providing lethal aid to Ukraine would escalate tensions with Russia.