By Brian Whitmore
Apparently, Ukraine is not the only country Russia has been plotting to invade in recent years. In the summer of 2020, Russia allegedly developed a detailed plan to invade and occupy Belarus according to information released by Ukrainian military intelligence.
“After the falsification of the presidential election in Belarus, the Russian Federation developed a plan to invade and suppress popular protests,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate stated on April 19. To support its claim, Ukrainian intelligence released what it says is a secret Russian military document that lays out the justification and plan for an invasion of Belarus.
The document noted the “tense” situation in Belarus following the country’s deeply flawed August 9, 2020 presidential election. It referenced the “subversive activities” of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya from exile in Lithuania and alleged that a “large-scale information campaign” was underway to build consensus for violent regime change in Belarus. If this could not be prevented, the document argued, Russia could be drawn into a full-scale war with NATO.
The document outlined a “plan to regroup the formations and military units of the First Tank Army in the vicinity of the mission” to invade Belarus. According to the plan, the troops would deploy “under the cover of participating in a joint exercise with the armed forces of the Republic of Belarus.”
The authenticity of the information made public by Ukraine could not be independently verified. If accurate, the Ukrainian intelligence claims suggest that a full-scale invasion of Belarus was a very real possibility in the summer of 2020, less than two years before Russia did conduct a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.