'Blackmail Through Lukashenka - Russia's Shot In Foot'

• 11.09.2023, 12:08

The outcome of the Kremlin's plans to put pressure on the West through Belarus.

The Kremlin's plans to put pressure on Western countries with its troops through the controlled territory of Belarus is a fairly standard plan of Putin's regime.

The executive director of the Centre for Applied Political Research "Penta" Aleksandr Leonov spoke about it in an interview with "Glavred".

"Here, the pressure is put on the West not to reduce aid to Ukraine, but to raise the stakes, and we can see from all the moments - when missiles flew into Poland, or when the "shaheds" got into Romania. Western societies have a certain consensus, which is that they are helping Ukraine, but they are not at war with Russia. And Russia wants to show the population of the Western countries by all means that in case of indirect participation of their countries in the war, there is a risk of escalation, and then, say, they will anyway enter the war, even if it is with Russia's proxy state - Belarus. Because everyone understands that Belarus itself is not capable of doing it. An interesting point is that they tried to use Wagner in this, and Poland took it quite seriously. After Prigozhin's death, this is no longer the case, however, the U.S. State Department warned Russia that the Alliance would perceive provocations involving Wagner as a direct attack by Russia itself. Therefore, Russia's games in proxy structures have become uninteresting, because it is clear who is behind it," he said.

"So raising rates is the main idea. This also includes the threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, although from a military point of view this is more of a problem for Russia rather than for Western countries. We can already see that in response, for example, the United States is returning nuclear weapons to Britain and there is even ongoing talk of the United States deploying military bases in Finland, and possibly deploying nuclear weapons there as well, which would mean approach time to St Petersburg within minutes. So here Russia is shooting itself in the foot, not even considering the fact that it is actually spitting in the direction of China. This is because Russia announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus after Xi Jinping's visit, and the joint declaration precisely stated that both countries oppose the deployment of nuclear weapons outside the countries that possess them. This is a very important point for China because, for example, U.S. nuclear weapons are stationed in South Korea. And it was important for China to insist in a geopolitical sense that this demand be fulfilled. So far, Russia is playing a game, but it is rather an unsuccessful game that brings more problems and dangers for Russia itself than for those around it," the expert concluded.