Putin is preparing Belarus for a full-scale war with Ukraine – Klimkin
The threat to Ukraine from Belarus is a threat to both NATO and the entire European Union.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin stated this on the Espresso TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The absorption of Belarus by Russia is a mega-challenge for us in terms of security. Because we will find ourselves in a Russian semi-encirclement on three sides - from the occupied Crimea and the Black Sea, from Russia and from Belarus. This will disperse our forces, and we will have to plan for the possibility of a Russian offensive or, at a minimum, massive Russian provocations from all directions.
Naturally, this topic of critical conversation, as they say, was not yesterday... both with NATO and with our partners. And it is very important for us to prove to them that our security in the context of Belarus is also their NATO security. And Putin threatens NATO and the EU just as much as he threatens us,” Klimkin said.
“I don’t think that Lukashenko will personally make any decisions on security issues; he is already in Putin’s pocket. Therefore, you need to pay attention to his statements, you need to listen to them carefully, understanding his psychological state, but you need to understand that Lukashenko is not critical for us. For us, the question of Belarus is the question of how much greater the Russian threat will be from the Belarusian direction,” says the ex-minister.
At the same time, he was very frightened by the scale of the Russian-Belarusian exercises “Zapad-2021”.
“As for the 2021 exercises, you don’t just need to pay attention to them, you need to understand that their scale is completely different. Previously, these were command post exercises with combat elements, now these are full-fledged exercises with all options being tested. There, actions are practiced not only at training grounds, but also, for example, in cities. That is, they are preparing for a full-scale war,” Klimkin worries.
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