Lukashenko seems to be giving Putin all the excuse he needs to take over Belarus:
The 65-year-old president claimed Sunday that Western powers were gathering military units in countries along Belarus’ western borders and denounced suggestions by some Western nations that Belarus should repeat the Aug. 9 presidential vote, which opposition supporters say gave Lukashenko a victory only through massive fraud. Official results say he received 80% of the vote. ...
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu dismissed the president's claim, tweeting that there is no NATO buildup in the region.
Lukashenko has basically decided to threaten Europe with Russian intervention:
“There will be no new election until you kill me,” he shouted, charging that the protests are ruining the economy and warning that the country will collapse if he steps down.
Is Russia ready to take this opportunity?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to assist his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko militarily if necessary as the latter faces mounting anti-government protests, the Kremlin said Sunday.
But, according to that article, "analysts" say Russia is unlikely to do what Putin says he is willing to do and which he clearly would like to do in order to claw back some of the great tragedy of the collapse of the USSR, as Putin sees 1989-1991.
Why wouldn't Russia directly intervene according to those analysts?
5. The Belarusian opposition is against Lukashenko, not Russia. The Kremlin may be able to live with that.
6. Putin's regime is very able to infiltrate & manipulate, which costs much less than military intervention. Why be too blatant?
Huh? Russia wants Belarus. Why should Putin care if protesters are or are not currently anti-Russia? Are pro-democracy protesters likely to love Putin if the protesters win? And again, the Russians want the territory.
And why be blatant? Because Russia sees what happens when it tries infiltration and manipulation without a blatant invasion and what happens when it combines the two. Russia won cleanly in Crimea with both measures while Russia is still struggling in a stalemate in the Donbas without an open and serious invasion.
The only thing that may save Belarus is the size of the country. Can Russia mobilize the resources to take the entire country quickly? Or is taking the capital Minsk the equivalent of taking the entire country?
Is Putin declining the invitation only because he is racing to be capable of intervening, having pocketed the invitation for when he is ready to RSVP?
If Putin isn't ready to move, thank the Ukrainians for continuing to resist Russia's 2014 invasion.
You wonder why my pucker factor is elevated?
UPDATE: That's resistance:
The diversity of the crowds and their huge size — more than 200,000 in Minsk on Sunday by some estimates — undercuts the ability of both the Belarusian establishment and Russia to argue that the protests aren't representative of the country as a whole.
The protesters need to not only defeat Lukashenko but deter Putin from seeking a cheap annexation of more lost Soviet territory.
UPDATE: Lukashenko wants to buy time:
Embattled Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday said he would be willing to relinquish power after a new election if a constitutional referendum called for it as protesters continued to call for him to step down.
To be clear, that means protesters get off the street. Then a referendum question has to be agreed on. Then a campaign on the referendum. Then a post-referendum new election. And then ...
... Russia has completed preparations to intervene in force!
UPDATE: The UN Security Council discussed Belarus. Russia has a UNSC veto. So discussion is as far as that will go.
UPDATE: Are Russian troops entering Belarus?
The unverified report says two dozen vehicles. And what they heck are they? They look like BTRs of some sort with three vertical launch tubes. I've never seen anything like that. Short-range air defense?
If so that's not an invasion but it could be to help set up an air defense bubble to enable intervention.
Tip to Instapundit.
UPDATE: Hmmm:
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, facing the biggest domestic challenge to his 26-year rule, deployed the military to the country’s borders with the European Union as he complained of unspecified security threats.
Okay, my pucker factor is redlining.
UPDATE: Does Putin consider Belarus an internal matter of Russia?
Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that any attempts to interfere in the domestic affairs of Belarus would be unacceptable, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
Putin knows the Germans aren't intervening in Belarus. Why is Putin pretending that's a potential threat?
UPDATE: Could this be the first mission for Putin's national guard?
Is the threat of insurrection, rebellion, or secession really high enough for Putin to worry?
Or would this new law allow the National Guard to take on police power in a newly acquired region (like Belarus)--freshly annexed after Russia invades--perhaps to force submission by people less happy than Crimeans to be absorbed into the proto-police state that Putin is rebuilding from its peak Soviet days?
Heck, the National Guard might do the invading if the regular army balks at carrying out that order or if Putin wants to seriously deny invading in defiance of reality.
I've mentioned my view on the Russian National Guard's potential for taking and pacifying a target people rather than being a civil war-focused armed force before.
I have few dots to connect with a lot of worry that they do.
UPDATE: This is serious:
Standing outside the giant truck-making factory BelAZ, it feels like the time of the 1917 Russian Bolshevik revolution. People pass leaflets to workers through the metal bars of the factory fence. Workers organize "stachkomy" - strike committees - and "comrades" give passionate speeches inside factories calling on their colleagues to join a "zabastovka" - a strike.
These strikes became a major boost to the opposition movement in Belarus as thousands of people went onto the streets to voice their protest against what they see as rigged elections. But as workers walk off the job to show their support for protesters, many now are asking what will be next for them and for Belarus.
Can the protesters drive Lukashenko from power and deter Russia from invading?
The degree of difficulty is great.
UPDATE: Keane thinks that if democrats drive Lukashenko from power that Putin will invade.
That's certainly the intent. But can Putin mobilize power quickly enough to make it a deluge rather than a trickle? Can Lukashenko hang on long enough to buy time for Putin to save him?
What will Belarus' NATO neighbors do?
If Russia invades Belarus, will Ukraine respond by initiating an offensive in the Donbas while trying to bombard Sevastopol area bases in Crimea?
I assume EUCOM has canceled all leave. And my thanks to Germany for being so damned unready to deter Russia.
UPDATE: More.
If Russia takes over Belarus, America will need a corps in Poland--with four armored brigades and the ability to rapidly reinforce.
A non-US NATO corps with the mission of taking Kaliningrad would also be necessary.
And as long as I'm asking, an actual real armored cavalry regiment to screen the Suwalki Gap.
Plus separate armored cavalry squadrons (battalions) or allied equivalents to screen the NATO Baltic states' borders with Russia.
UPDATE: The European Union rejects Lukashenko's fraudulant victory:
The EU intends to express "condemnation and rejection" of Lukashenko's regime, Borrell told reporters in Santander, according to TV footage released by state broadcaster TVE.
What will Russia decide? Remember that the EU may write the check but NATO has to cash it.
Much may depend on whether Lukashenko can stop the protests on his own:
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ordered his police on Wednesday to put down protests in the capital Minsk, signalling an escalation after a week and a half of mass demonstrations against his rule.
Russia is watching. Lord knows how fast they can act, however.
UPDATE: The Russians have no particular love for Lukashenko but also have no particular reason to fear the people of Belarus who generally think well of Russia.
I'll repeat that the unrest has likely surprised Russia and they probably weren't ready for a snap military operation of any scale.
And note that the leader (figurehead?) of the opposition, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, fled to Lithuania and not to Russia. So would Putin trust her?
Yet Putin thinks the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a great disaster. And if he thinks that this unrest is an opening to regain a large chunk of buffer zone (and launching pad), I have to think he'd take it if he can, and the fond feelings of Belarusians be damned.
