The project was launched in the aftermath of last year’s unprecedented mass protests which clearly jolted Lukashenko after his disputed re-election to a sixth term and the widespread, and often brutal, use of security forces and the courts to crush dissent.

Putin has said nothing about any new incursion more than seven years after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula and Moscow proxies took over large chunks of eastern Ukraine – 14,000 people have died in the ensuing conflict.