Russia apparently wants to include Belarus. Polin suspects she’s the missing Maddie McCann – but even she isn’t sure

Moscow is apparently planning a clandestine takeover of neighboring Belarus by 2030. At least that is what a leaked document from the Moscow presidential administration suggests, reports the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Putin’s strategists want to undermine the country politically, economically and militarily. The goal is a common union state under Russian leadership. Western security circles consider the paper authentic.

The “SZ”, WDR and NDR, together with nine other European media, reviewed the internal 17-page Kremlin paper entitled “Strategic goals of the Russian Federation in Belarus”. According to the report, the document apparently dates from the summer of 2021 and describes how the Kremlin aims to gradually incorporate a sovereign and independent European nation by 2030.

The document provides an overview of Russia’s strategic goals in Belarus in the fields of politics/defence, trade and economy, and society, and divides them into short-term (until 2022), medium-term (until 2025) and long-term term (2030). According to the newspaper, Moscow’s strategic goal includes “ensuring the dominant influence of the Russian Federation in social policy, trade, economy, science, education and culture,” according to the SZ report.

The constitutional revision, decided in February 2022, should be completed on Russian terms and laws should be “harmonized” with those of the Russian Federation. At the same time, the Kremlin wants to push back Western influence and create a bulwark against NATO.

Several experts and Western secret services consider the letter to be credible. “The content of the document is absolutely plausible and corresponds to what we also observe,” a senior intelligence officer told the “SZ”. The strategy paper should be seen as part of Putin’s larger plan: the creation of a new Greater Russian Empire.

“Russia’s goals in Belarus are the same as in Ukraine,” said Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE): “Only that Moscow uses coercion instead of war in Belarus. .” Ultimately, both cases are about the recovery of Great Russia. The Belarusian plan is a blueprint, warned Franak Viacorka, chief adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tichanovskaya. It can also be used “for Kazakhstan, Armenia, Moldova”.

“In its external form, the document resembles a standard document of the Russian bureaucracy or political administration,” Martin Kragh, deputy director of the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), told the paper. The content is “largely in line with Russia’s political objectives towards Belarus since the 1990s”.

The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko makes his land available as a deployment area for the Russian offensive war against Ukraine. Just a few days ago, after meeting Lukashenko, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin said that he had preserved the industrial heritage of the Soviet Union in Belarus. A new collaboration can be built on this.

According to reports from the Russian agency, Lukashenko underlined technological cooperation between the two allied but internationally isolated neighbors. The ruler claimed that the sanctions imposed on Ukraine because of the Russian attack were in vain.

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(t-online/lw)