Kyiv, Ukraine – It was, perhaps, Ukraine’s quietest victory over Russia’s oldest and closest ally.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged neighbouring Belarus to shut down four Moscow-installed relay stations that help guide Russian drone attacks on Ukraine.

The border between Ukraine and Belarus stretches for 1,084km (674 miles), mostly across swamps and Europe’s largest and densest forests.

The stations – originally cellular communication towers – relay signals for Russian drone operators and allow their unmanned aircraft to exchange information with each other and fly deep into western Ukraine, which has few drone interceptors and NATO-supplied air defence systems.

The relayers did “make the signal stronger” and the Russian attacks “more precise”, Andriy Pronin, one of the pioneers of drone warfare in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.

Zelenskyy said on June 19 that Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko allowed Russia to run “equipment that corrects fire on Ukrainian civilians, specifically civilians”.

And then he issued an ultimatum that reflects Kyiv’s newfound assertiveness.

“I think one week will be enough” for Lukashenko to remove the relayers, Zelenskyy said. “If he doesn’t do that, we will.”

‘A barking dog doesn’t bite’

With its heavy bomber drones and missiles, Kyiv is capable of striking Belarus, a country about a third of the size of Ukraine whose air defence systems are too obsolete to effectively repel drone attacks.

The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces was far less diplomatic than Zelenskyy.

“A barking dog doesn’t bite,” Robert Browdy wrote on Facebook, referring to Lukashenko. “The first 500 targets [in Belarus] have been marked. A free and very practical advice – get out of Ukraine’s sight.”

Lukashenko, an ex-collective farm manager who became one of the world’s longest-ruling leaders and has helmed his nation of 10 million people since 1994, hinted that he may retaliate by targeting the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The site of the world’s largest nuclear disaster sits in a forested, cordoned-off exclusion zone next to the Belarusian border – and less than 100km (62 miles) north of Kyiv.

“We have one goal, a serious one, with exact coordinates and not far from Belarus at all,” Lukashenko said in televised remarks.

But by Thursday, he quietly had shut down the relayers, Zelenskyy said.

“Whether they were dismantled or not, I honestly don’t know,” the Ukrainian president said during a news conference. “But we’re working on it. The fact is that the relayers don’t work for now.”

The last Russian drone crossed the Belarusian-Ukrainian border on Sunday, Flagstock, an independent Belarusian publication, reported, quoting residents of border regions.

Lukashenko explained the shutdown as a peacemaking step – and tried to assure the Kremlin that he is always on its side.

“I told [Ukrainian negotiators] directly, ‘Boys, you go tell your president that if he thinks he can talk to us this way and force us into the war, then he has to understand that the quality of the war will change momentarily. It will be an absolutely different war,” Lukashenko was quoted by his country’s state-run news agency, Belta, as saying.

“Our position is about peace. But in any situation, we will be next to Russia,” he said.

According to a Belarus-born, Kyiv-based analyst, Zelenskyy’s ultimatum worked.

“Ukraine deliberately ups its ante in its dialogue with Belarus,” Ihar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera.

Apart from removing the immediate threat from drone attacks, it may herald a separate track in Ukraine’s negotiations with Belarus.

The talks may help Lukashenko “exit” Belarus’s diplomatic and economic isolation by the West and “balance Russia’s influence”, Tyshkevich said.

Lukashenko is one of the members of United States President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which may play a role in rebuilding post-war Ukraine.

But Kyiv would have its own list of demands before allowing Belarusian companies to take part in the restoration and letting Belarusian goods such as petrol, foodstuffs and construction materials back in.

“For Ukraine, it’s a matter of Lukashenko’s responsibility for the war and the defence of Ukraine’s interests,” Tyshkevich said.

The shutdown is Lukashenko’s “attempt to find an indirect compromise” with Kyiv, according to Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank.

“This is a concession to Zelenskyy’s ultimatum but not a public one, not an official one,” he told Al Jazeera.

Moscow could be disappointed by Lukashenko caving in, but it has so far not commented on it.

Russia “undoubtedly saw it as a manifestation of Lukashenko’s weakness”, Fesenko said.

However, Russia “is not ready to help him, including because it lacks military resources”, he said.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Zelenskyy’s ultimatum “absolutely aggressive” and added that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “soon” discuss it with Lukashenko.

A day later, Lukashenko travelled to Moscow to meet with Putin. The Kremlin did not hold a news conference and did not release any information about their meeting.

Moscow has been urging Belarus to take part in the war since its beginning, but Lukashenko repeatedly refused while managing to demand more political and economic concessions from Russia.

In late May, he and Putin presided over joint military drills that “rehearsed” the use of Russia’s nuclear weapons.

As part of the drills, Moscow supplied Minsk with modified Su-25 fighter jets, Iskander-M ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons that are reportedly stored less than 200km (124 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

A Belarusian shift as Russia’s front-line woes grow

Lukashenko’s change of tone heralds Kyiv’s success in slowing down Moscow’s offensive and destroying oil terminals, refineries, fuel depots and supply routes in Russia and Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions.

“What’s significant is that now Ukraine acts from the position of power and Lukashenko has to reckon with it,” Fesenko said.

Ukrainian drones, for instance, could within hours kill his golden goose – the Mozyr and Novopolotsk oil refineries.

Built in the Soviet Union’s waning days, they process discounted Russian crude – and Lukashenko sells the production in Eastern Europe and Russia.

The fuel supplies have become vital for Moscow in recent weeks as every Russian region experiences petrol shortages after Ukrainian drone attacks.

Eastern European nations have long been tired of Lukashenko’s political escapades.

In 2021, he allowed thousands of refugees and migrants, mostly from the Middle East and North Africa, to arrive in Belarus and cross into Poland and Lithuania in a move that was widely seen as a response to Western sanctions.

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, said on June 22 that Zelenskyy’s ultimatum affirms “Ukraine’s right to self-defence.”

BANGKOK (AP) — Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist Party’s rule, according to a new analysis released Monday by a human rights group.

The 88 Project, which focuses on rights issues in Vietnam, documented 56 such arrests in 2025, the third consecutive year of increases and double the number in 2022. The report includes only arrests where the defendant could be identified by name and the case tracked, and the actual numbers are believed to be much higher, said Ben Swanton, co-director of the group.

The report says the country under leader To Lam “routinely weaponizes criminal law” to quash dissent. To Lam, the country’s former top security official who has served as general secretary of the Communist Party since 2024, was also elected president earlier this year.

The arrests are largely driven by fears of an uprising against the leadership in a so-called “color revolution,” like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines, according to the report.

It is a fear shared by the Communist Party in neighboring China, which has been accused of using similar tactics to stifle critics. Though competing maritime claims have led to confrontations between the two countries and a tense diplomatic relationship at times, China and Vietnam were able to agree earlier this year to together “prioritize political security and enhance efforts to prevent and resist color revolutions,” the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

“With the ascendancy of To Lam, the country has become a literal police state that tolerates no dissent,” Swanton said.

“This represents a serious regression from the period of relative openness in the 2010s when some dissent was tolerated and civil society groups were able to engage in policy activism.”

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the findings of the report.

The report found that authorities are relying increasingly on Article 331 of Vietnam’s penal code, which makes it a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison to “abuse democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”

Previously little used, “authorities have enlarged the scope and application of Article 331 so that it reaches further into society, beyond human rights and democracy dissidents … to all those who voice any grievance with state or local Communist Party and government officials,” New York-based Human Rights Watch wrote in a report last year.

“The Vietnamese authorities’ increased use of Article 331 is a little known facet of the government’s expanding crackdown on ordinary people who are seeking to use social media and other peaceful means to publicly raise important social issues, including religious freedom, land rights, rights of Indigenous people, and government and Communist Party corruption,” Human Rights Watch wrote.

Among those arrested under Article 331 last year were three men behind the YouTube channel “Nguoi Da Tin’ — The Messenger — on allegations that videos they uploaded were ”distorted content” that violated the statute, The 88 Project reported.

The report provides details of every arrest identified as politically related in 2025.

Those also included an activist for the minority Montagnard group who was arrested in Thailand and extradited to Vietnam, a dissident writer accused of spreading “propaganda against the state,” and a man who helped residents of Ha Tinh province file complaints demanding fair compensation for land expropriated for a new highway.

“The Vietnamese government has dealt alarmingly severe punishments to longstanding targets like journalists and human rights activists, while displaying an increasing willingness to attack groups previously thought safe, such as political exiles and legal petitioners,” the report said.

A “new normal” of heightened risk and uncertain regulation is impacting the Strait of Hormuz, shipping firm Hapag-Lloyd warned Sunday, as military strikes escalated and conflicting routing directives plunged the waterway into operational chaos.

The remarks from the German shipping giant also came as Tehran “simultaneously” began moving millions of barrels of crude oil from Kharg Island for the first time in days, according to maritime intelligence firm Windward AI.

“At Kharg, the T-Jetty and Western Terminal loaded simultaneously for the first time in days; the East Waiting Area holds 28 tankers, 27 dark, signaling the Iranian crude export cycle restarting,” Windward AI said in a post on X.

The outbound cargo consists of an estimated 4.12 million barrels of wet cargo, including crude oil and other liquid hydrocarbons. Of that total, about 3.91 million barrels are crude oil, analytics firm Vortexa said.

GULF SHIPPING OPERATIONS GRIND TO HALT NEAR IRAN, US QUIETLY PREPARES FOR POSSIBLE STRIKE: ‘HEIGHTENED RISK’

“We have to acknowledge that this is for some months the new normal in the Persian Gulf region,” Hapag-Lloyd AG spokesperson Hanja Maria Richter told Fox News Digital.

“The situation has been fluid for us since the beginning of the conflict,” she said before adding that constant vigilance has become essential to operating in the region.

“We have been making and still make regular risk and situation assessments with our security partners, all relevant authorities and our people on shore and, of course, on the vessels,” Richter said.

“It is a region in conflict, so we consider this with every single ship we move in the region and assess the risks for every vessel and its crew individually.”

IRAN STARTS ‘INDISCRIMINATE’ STRIKES ACROSS GULF OF OMAN, HITS SHADOW TANKER TIED TO REGIME

Richter’s remarks came as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) launched airstrikes against Iranian targets, including Qeshm Island on June 26 after a vessel was struck in the strait.

This prompted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to retaliate by targeting U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain. 

Adding to the strike risk is a tug-of-war over control of the transit lanes.

Lloyd’s List described the fracturing of the waterway as a “confused, two-tier system now operating in the strait, which remains split between the Iran-controlled northern route and a U.S.-protected southern ‘highway,’ with the pre-war routes rendered unusable because of the risk of mines, separating them.”

Iran is responsible for managing and fully reopening maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz under recent understandings, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday, according to Iran International.

EXPERTS URGE EXTREME CAUTION ON IRAN’S ‘CROWN JEWEL’ HEZBOLLAH — TERROR GROUP WITH US BLOOD ON ITS HANDS

Iranian state television said that passage through the Strait of Hormuz demands coordination with the IRGC.

Hapag-Lloyd pushed back against any future attempts to weaponize or monetize passage through the critical global chokepoint.

“It would be fundamentally wrong to impose fees for passage through international waters,” Richter said.

“Fees for infrastructure such as the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal are a different matter, as they reflect major infrastructure investments. That is not the case with the Strait of Hormuz.”

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While thousands of crew members remain caught by conflicting naval directives, Hapag-Lloyd said it had successfully navigated the initial bottleneck.

“Good news is that we were able to have all Hapag-Lloyd vessels that were affected by the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz and had been waiting in the Persian Gulf depart safely from the Gulf,” Richter noted before adding that “the safety of our crews is our highest priority.”