Russian President Vladimir Putin’s executive office released an internal strategy document in fall 2021 outlining the Kremlin’s ten-year plan to take full control of neighboring Belarus, a country north of Ukraine that borders three NATO members , Yahoo News reported on Monday.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has held the post since 1994 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is a close ally of Putin and a supporter of invading Ukraine.
The internal strategy document, obtained by Yahoo News, details Russia’s plans to annex Belarus and create a “Union State of Russia and Belarus” by 2030.
Russian President Vladimir Putin embraces his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko during a meeting in Moscow, Russia December 29, 2018. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool via REUTERS)
The Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation has signed off on the outline, which outlines benchmarks the Kremlin must meet by 2022, 2025 and 2030 to ensure that Russia is “in control of the information space” and that there is a “common approach to interpreting history” in Belarus, according to Yahoo News. Russia allegedly wants to achieve this through political, economic and military tactics.
WHO IS BELARUS PRESIDENT ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO, ‘EUROPE’S LAST DICTATOR’?
The Russian and Belarusian embassies in the United States did not respond to requests for comment on Monday evening.
FILE PHOTO: Russian and Belarus militaries participate in a military exercise in Gomel, Belarus on February 19. (Stringer/Anadolu agency via Getty Images)
Russian forces deployed on Belarusian territory ahead of Putin’s invasion last year, but so far Lukashenko has refused to get directly involved in the conflict.
BELARUSIAN COURT SENTENCES TOP POLISH JOURNALIST TO 8 YEARS IN PRISON FOR “INCITING DISCORD”
Ahead of Lukashenko’s latest visit to Moscow last week, the Belarusian leader said troops would be deployed if Ukrainians invaded their territory.
“I am ready to fight together with Russians from the territory of Belarus only in one case: if even one soldier (from Ukraine) comes to our territory with a gun to kill my people,” Lukashenko said on Thursday.
“If they commit aggression against Belarus, our response will be the cruelest. The cruelest!”
A photograph taken on February 17, 2022 shows the Belarus armored personnel carrier (APC) during joint exercises of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus as part of an inspection by the Union State Response Force, at a firing range in shot near a town of Osipovichi outside Minsk. (MAXIM GUCHEK/BELTA/AFP via Getty Images)
Belarus Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said on Monday the country would form a new paramilitary force of up to 150,000 volunteers.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The domestic strategy document is part of what many Western leaders have warned is Putin’s ultimate goal in invading Ukraine.
“He has much bigger ambitions in Ukraine,” President Biden said on the day of Russia’s invasion last February. “He wants, in fact, to re-establish the former Soviet Union. That’s what it’s all about.”
