Home › Politics › What the Dnipro strike and Belarus arrests revealed
What the Dnipro strike and Belarus arrests revealed
Summary
Two reports from 20 and 21 November 2024 pointed to pressure on Ukraine from the battlefield and from across the border.
What was the picture across Ukraine and its neighbourhood on 26 November 2024? Two reports from the preceding days framed it: a strike on a Ukrainian city and a crackdown on solidarity with Ukraine in Belarus.
On 21 November 2024, Russia struck Dnipro with a projectile that Russian President Vladimir Putin said was a new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile. That confirmed earlier reports from the United States and other western officials, who had said Russia used an intermediate-range missile. Initial reports had misidentified it as an RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. The strike was part of Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.
A day earlier, on 20 November 2024, around 1,671 anti-war protesters in Belarus were arrested for showing solidarity with Ukraine. The arrests formed part of a crackdown on the opposition under President Alexander Lukashenko.
Two fronts of pressure
The two events were different in kind. One was a military escalation, marked by the declared use of a new class of missile against a Ukrainian city. The other was domestic repression in a neighbouring state, aimed at people expressing support for Ukraine.
Together they showed that the war's effects extended beyond the front line. Protests against the Russian invasion had taken place in many places worldwide, including in Russia and in Russian-occupied Ukraine. The arrests in Belarus showed how such expressions of solidarity were treated there.
The identification of the missile also mattered for how the strike was understood. Western officials' account, later confirmed by Putin, replaced the first reports of an intercontinental weapon with that of an intermediate-range one.
