Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine would not have been operationally feasible without the events of August 2020 in Belarus, Michael Kofman has argued, identifying the suppression of the Belarusian protest movement as a critical and often overlooked precondition for the war.

Kofman laid out this argument during a discussion on the origins of Russia's war hosted by the Kennan Institute, "Hvylya" reports.

"None of this would be possible if it wasn't for the events in Belarus in 2020," Kofman said. The Russian view was that Moscow had resolved the Belarusian political crisis to its advantage, which "allowed them to put the pieces in place to attempt a full-scale invasion of Ukraine." Without Belarusian territory, the entire northern axis of the operation - the push from Belarus to encircle Kyiv and the attempt to land Russian airborne forces in the capital - simply could not have happened.

Kofman placed this within a broader timeline of Russian preparation. Putin gave the Russian military orders to begin planning a large-scale operation very early in 2021, with the goal of executing it roughly one year later. Initial exercises and deployments began in late February 2021, producing the first invasion scare that spring. That buildup was interpreted at the time as coercive diplomacy.

A second, more covert Russian buildup followed in the fall of 2021. This time, US intelligence detected both the scale of preparations and Russia's actual intent to conduct a full-scale invasion, leading to Washington's unprecedented decision to publicly disclose the intelligence.

Kofman noted that the US posture in early 2021 may have inadvertently reinforced Moscow's calculations. Washington was communicating that "Ukraine was a fairly peripheral interest," with the Biden administration focused on domestic policy and China. Europe was increasingly positioned as a secondary theater, and the US was signaling that Russia was "very low on its agenda."

Also read: 150 Km Behind the Front Line: Ukraine Delivered a Massive Strike on Key Russian Assets.