A few days ago, the Belarusian ruler Lukashenko announced a military unit of his country's armed forces with the Russian army. An opposition politician living in exile is now warning that Russia wants to station a number of soldiers in Belarus so that it can also attack Ukraine from the north.
Belarusian opposition politician Pavel Latushka, who lives in exile in Warsaw, is convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko are planning an invasion of Ukraine from Belarus next spring. "Our sources say that the Russians want to station 120,000 soldiers in Belarus by then," Latuschka told the editorial network Germany.
He put the current number of Russian soldiers in his country at around 5,000, spread over four Russian military bases. The former culture minister said the background to the Russian-Belarusian plans was an attempt to build up a potential threat from Belarus in order to force Ukraine to move more troops to its own northern border in order to be able to ward off a possible attack. "That would force Ukraine to withdraw forces in the south or east," explained Latuschka.
"Putin uses our country for his aggression, and Lukashenko is the useful idiot," Latuschka continued, according to the report. As Putin's lapdog, Lukashenko is economically completely dependent, so he cannot say no. At the same time, Lukashenko wants to try to upgrade the Belarusian army from the current 65,000 to 100,000 soldiers by spring. "It will be difficult for him," said Latuschka, emphasizing: "We are a peaceful people, our people don't want to fight the Ukrainians. They see no reason for this war and don't want to die for Putin."
Lukashenko recently announced the formation of a joint regional military unit between his country's armed forces and the Russian army. So far, however, the country of ten million people has not actively participated in the war of aggression. According to the West, however, Belarus serves Russia as a deployment and retreat area.
In the middle of the week, the NATO countries are not particularly nervous about the stationing of Belarusian troops on the border with Ukraine. A representative of the military alliance said on Wednesday that there are currently no indications that Belarus wants to actively participate in the Russian war of aggression. As a possible reason, he named the threat of sanctions from the West.
Referring to Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, he said: "I don't think we should doubt that Lukashenko understands that the full force of the sanctions imposed on Russia will also be used against Belarus if the Belarusian armed forces do the same kind of operations against Ukraine."
