Alexander Lukashenko is one of a small handful of leaders in the world today who still call Russian President Vladimir Putin an ally. And in allowing Russian forces to invade Ukraine from his country, the Belarus dictator has basically ceded control of his country to the Kremlin.
One could say that this is Putin’s way of gaining a victory without firing a single shot, according to exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, in an interview with The Guardian.
“It seems to us that Lukashenko is not controlling our military anymore, the only thing he is controlling is repression against the Belarusian people,” she said. “We see signs of the military occupation of Belarus.”
And it is not like the world doesn’t know what is happening in Belarus, either. Last week, the U.S. Defense Department warned that Belarus appeared to be preparing to send its military into Ukraine in support of Russia’s invasion.
There have also been images showing up on social media – like that of a convoy of the 38th Air Assault Brigade of the Belarusian army (not Russian) near Kobryn in the Brest region.
Tsikhanouskaya said Putin’s aim is “to put blood on the hands of Belarus soldiers, to connect Lukashenko’s regime to this war, to make it an accomplice.”
A launchpad for Russia’s aggression
In the weeks preceding the Invasion of Ukraine on February 24, over 30,000 Russian troops were sent to Belarus on the pretext of a “military training” exercise.
A mere four days later, Lukashenko revoked his country’s post-cold war constitutional neutrality after a “staged referendum” gave him clearance to host not only the Russian forces permanently – but Russian nuclear weapons that had been removed from the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“The stealth annexation of Belarus that has been underway while everyone has been focused on Ukraine means that Belarus is already a full outpost of Russian military power,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program, reports ForeignPolicy.com.
Perhaps it may be a coincidence, but the new Belarus military doctrine, allowing Russia to place nuclear weapons on Belarus soil just happens to coincide with Putin’s February 28 announcement that he was putting Russia’s nuclear force on alert.
“If Putin wants to take control of the entire territory of Belarus tomorrow he could do it,” Tsikhanouskaya said. The Minsk regime’s suppression of any civic or political activity allows Russian troops to use the territory of Belarus as Putin wants, to the point of intervening in its political life “at any moment”, she said. “Lukashenko is a puppet. Putin controls the country through him.”
Ukraine and Belarus are together integral to Putin’s imperial vision, Tsikhanouskaya said, their fates now interdependent. “The Kremlin’s intention is to return our past Soviet Union countries to be one huge empire again.”
