November 9, Pozirk. Three base stations operated by mobile providers have been put out of service in southern Belarus, possibly targeted for facilitating Russian drone strikes on Ukraine, according to Belarusian media outlet Flagshtok.
Two of the systems are located in the Homieĺ region and one in the Brest region, the report said, citing the Telegram channel of beCloud, a Belarusian telecommunications infrastructure operator.
All three base stations are relatively close to the Ukrainian border. One, operated by A1, is located at the Majdan checkpoint in the Chojniki district, just outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, about 26 kilometers (16 miles) from the border. The two other facilities are operated by MTS and situated in the village of Słabada in the Lelčycy district, about 27 kilometers from the border, and in the village of Hruški in the Małaryta district, about 12 kilometers from the border.
Ukraine may view the base stations as strategic targets, having previously said that such facilities are used to relay signals for controlling Russian drones in neighboring parts of Ukraine, Flagshtok said.
Andriy Demchenko, spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, told Ukrinform on November 4 that no relay systems transmitting signals to Russian attack drones had been detected in Belarus during the previous week.
On June 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave the Belarusian authorities one week to dismantle four drone-control relay systems allegedly used to facilitate Russian attacks on Ukraine. “If he [Alaksandar Łukašenka] does not shut them down, we will shut down everything within a week. Either they will do it, or we will,” he warned. Five days later, Zelensky said the relay systems had suspended operations.
Reports by Ukrainian officials suggest that Belarus-based relay systems have been repeatedly switched on and off since then. On September 17, Ukrainian monitoring group єRadar said that four relay systems used to control Russian jet-powered drones had been detected in Belarus since the previous week, all located in the Homieĺ region.
Mobile relay systems appear to have been used much more actively as of late, as Belarus fears that Ukraine will be able to track down stationary equipment.
