The invasion that no one talks about.. Russia swallows Belarus in silence

Introduction to translation

To understand things in Ukraine today, we may have to go back to before the escalation and read the scene where Russia made a bold move like launching a military attack on another country that had ambitions to join NATO or perhaps the European Union or both.

On this subject, Yasmine Sarhan, the London-based editor of the Atlantic magazine, prepared an analysis published by the American magazine, showing how Putin swallowed Belarus amid a general silence from the West, before he embarked on his most prominent adventure by invading Ukraine.

translation text

Within a month, Vladimir Putin was effectively able to transform a former Soviet state into an extension of Russian territory, in full view of the United States and Europe, without firing a single shot into that country.

This did not happen in Ukraine, but rather in neighboring Belarus, which has hosted Russian soldiers and their military equipment on its territory since the beginning of the year, under the pretext of the scheduled exercises between the armies of the two countries.

On February 19, the Belarusian government announced the possibility of keeping 30,000 Russian soldiers on its territory, while Moscow's largest concentration in Minsk (Belarus' capital) since the end of the Cold War.

Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, this is a major victory for Putin in his war with the West, as the move represents not only a violation of Belarusian sovereignty, but also a challenge to NATO as the security guarantor in the Baltics, where Belarus shares a border with three NATO member states.

However, few leaders outside the Baltic region have commented on the declaration or stated how they plan to respond.

Belarus dilemma

It was not always easy to ignore Belarus. The country caught the world's attention in 2020 with a rigged presidential election that ensured the prolongation of the reign of long-ruling leader, "Alexander Lukashenko";

What sparked the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in the country's history.

Lukashenko survived with the help of the Russian government, which provided him with police forces to crush the protests, and the funds needed to bypass Western sanctions, and the world suddenly came to see Belarus as a vassal state, even though it was supposedly neutral (and its army's neutrality is stipulated in the constitution), and often Its commander complained of Russian interference.

Two years later, Russian investment paid off. Not only could Putin claim strategic extension in his escalating conflict with Ukraine (Kyiv is only about 225 kilometers from the Belarusian border), but he had also succeeded in consolidating Belarus within Moscow's sphere of influence.

In recent months, Lukashenko acknowledged Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and pledged Moscow's support in any military conflict involving Ukraine.

A constitutional amendment is expected soon to remove the articles that officially guarantee Belarus' neutrality, in addition to canceling its commitment not to host a nuclear weapon on its soil.

This deterioration in Belarus took place at a faster pace than the exiled Belarusian opposition in Lithuania had anticipated, and this shift brought alarm.

“In Belarus we are witnessing a softer version of what we are witnessing in Ukraine, the only difference is that in Ukraine the state is facing the occupation, but in Belarus the state is supporting it,” Vranak Vyachorka, a senior advisor to the leader of the Belarusian opposition, Svetlana Tsykhanuskaya, told me.

This transformation will not go unnoticed in places like Poland and the Baltic states that have long viewed Belarus as their bulwark with Russia.

By ceding its territory to Moscow, Belarus had already brought Russian forces to the doorsteps of Poland and the Baltic.

There is one area in particular where military commanders and experts stopped, which is a border strip of about 105 km long located on the Polish-Lithuanian border, known as the "Suwałki Pass", linking Belarus to the Russian region of "Kaliningrad" isolated from its mother country, located to the west From Belarus and the Baltics and to the east of Poland, this corridor also connects the Baltic states to the rest of NATO countries in Europe. Allied countries.

The threat posed by the "Swaukee Pass" is no longer a theoretical threat, as Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, told me. "It is now a major weakness."

From Hodges' view, even if the Russian aggression in Ukraine ends, Moscow's control of Belarus will most likely remain permanent, and may even become official in the future, and this would not only destroy the independence of Belarus that Lukashenko abandoned, but will also constitute a permanent threat to the alliance. NATO.

heavy price

Little wonder, then, that the leaders of Lithuania and Latvia have repeated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's calls to the West to impose immediate sanctions on Russia, a measure that the United States and the European Union initially hesitated to take prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine;

They hoped that the threat of sanctions alone would deter Russian provocations. However, Moscow's military control of Belarus, and the subsequent stationing of Russian forces in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, put an end to these false hopes.

“In 2008 (in Georgia), in 2014 (in Crimea), and again this time, Russia demonstrated its ability to use military threats against its neighbors,” a spokesperson for the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry told me via e-mail, adding that “Belarus It is already de facto integrated into the structure of the Russian army...The build-up of Russian forces in Belarus reinforces the superiority of the Russian army over NATO in the region. These developments require a stronger defensive and deterrent position on the part of NATO in the Baltic region."

The build-up of Russian forces in Belarus reinforces the superiority of the Russian army over NATO in the region.

Western leaders and analysts in their discussions of Belarus have long focused on the threat the Russian presence in the country poses to Ukraine, but the threat extends to Belarusian sovereignty as well.

The problem for Belarus is that its leadership has welcomed Moscow's presence, unlike Ukraine. Even if the West wants to take a stand to defend Belarus' sovereignty, it may not have enough support to do so, since Belarus' opposition leaders are either in prison or in exile.

As for the Belarusian people, they remain under the tight control of their country's security forces, which have already shown their intolerance of peaceful demonstrations.

In this regard, Vyachorka says: "There is no room for movement, we feel as if everyone has abandoned us."

However, the West ignores Belarus, at great cost.

As long as Russian forces remain on Belarusian soil, Putin will have the means to threaten Kyiv and NATO closely.

What began in Belarus will not necessarily end at its borders.

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Translation: Hadeer Abdul Azim

This report has been translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect the website of Meydan.