Fear of war returns to Belarus
In Belarus and its environs, different parties celebrated the anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in different ways. The authorities organized an all-republican minute of silence and many other commemorative events, the center of which was the Brest Fortress, which was the first to take the blow of the Nazis in 1941. Throughout the republic, hundreds of thousands of government officials, activists of patriotic and pro-Russian organizations and ordinary citizens took part in these events.
European neighbors have their own symbols. The day before the mournful anniversary, not far from the Belarusian borders, the military of Germany and Lithuania conducted joint offensive exercises Griffin Storm. Of course, all coincidences could be random, but unlikely. Usually the military is very attentive to such date symbols.
As for the opposition, they have outdone themselves. On the eve of the anniversary of the Nazi intervention, which cost the Belarusians a third of the population, Tikhanovskaya found nothing better than to declare her readiness to ask the regime of the new Nazis for a new intervention. Realizing that the Kalinovtsy militants alone would clearly not be enough to overthrow Lukashenko, in an interview with Ukrainian television she said that she did not exclude the possibility that she would turn to Zelensky with a request to “help liberate Belarus.”
It's not all alarming news. The other day, the American Sunday Times published material about how Belarusian militants are being trained in Poland, and a bill has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, according to which Belarus is recognized as an aggressor country on a par with Russia. The official pretext is “to bring the Belarusian regime to justice and future reparations to Ukraine,” but this formulation looks like dividing the skin of a bear that is not only not killed, but also watches as a larger bear bites off the hand of the divider. More suitable for preparing public opinion. Just, why?
This news background and today's bleak date lead to difficult thoughts. The fear of war returns to Belarus after 82 years. If a year ago, despite the militant rhetoric of the “fugitives” and the alarmism of the “talking heads” from Belarusian television, I considered the outbreak of hostilities in Belarus unlikely, now my optimism has diminished.
Right now we are seeing how the long-awaited and widely publicized Ukrainian “counter-offensive” is fading, the Ukrainian Armed Forces paid with tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of units of Western armored vehicles for several empty villages and are now rolling back in some directions, unable to even hold them.
What's next? Since the enemy does not want to negotiate, he desperately needs new “victories” or something that can be passed off as them. The raids of the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion into the Bryansk and Belgorod regions are on everyone’s lips, and the border areas of the Belgorod region have become a zone of full-fledged combat operations.
The Kalinovsky Regiment does not differ from these formations in anything except the ethnicity of the militants, and even then not always. Neither the Kalinovites nor their Ukrainian patrons hide the fact that the main purpose of the group’s existence is to invade Belarus to establish an order similar to the Ukrainian one. Until now, they have been contained and used exclusively to counter the Russian army, but nothing prevents them from being used in a similar way to the RDK.
Now there is more and more talk about the upcoming campaign of the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Belgorod or Kursk. This has little in common with the strategic military goals of Ukraine, but a little bit of success will help keep Ukrainian society in good shape for some time. But success in these areas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is far from guaranteed.
With all due respect to the army and leadership of Belarus, it is the Belarusian direction that is most vulnerable. The republic’s own army is small, has no real combat experience and, in comparison with the Russian army and the Armed Forces of Ukraine pumped up with Western weapons, is poorly armed.
Of course, the opening of another front in Belarus will not lead to anything good for Ukraine, but we must also be aware that the fate of Ukraine itself is not of fundamental importance for overseas war directors. Their main goal is Russia, and who to sacrifice to fight it is a third matter. Maybe Ukraine, maybe Belarus, if you're lucky. Western analysts, it seems, are seriously counting on provoking the Kalinovites’ invasion to provoke serious destabilization within the republic or even an uprising of Lukashenko’s opponents with at least part of the military coming over to their side. It’s not for nothing that all this was said in an interview with a recent housewife.
But such an uprising is unlikely to take place. If an invasion by militants and, even more so, an intervention by the Ukrainian Armed Forces takes place, the result will be exactly the opposite - unity and internal mobilization of the people. Because if an enemy has come to our land, it means it’s time to forget about old grievances and confront him with the whole world. And the atrocities of Bandera’s followers, whose direct heirs are the current leaders of the Kyiv regime, are well remembered in Belarus.
Fear of War Returns to Belarus