Russia is artificially organizing a migration crisis and using the illegitimate Lukashenko regime in Belarus to create a new point of destabilizing the security situation in Eastern Europe. Russia has long used similar tried and tested methods of pressure to achieve its imperial geopolitical goals and blackmail European countries into speaking more softly about Russia, intending to completely lift sanctions and accuse third parties (foreign governments) of crimes. In particular, in 2015, just after Russia intervened in the military conflict in Syria, a humanitarian catastrophe began in Europe, caused by a massive influx of migrants. The latter was a powerful impetus for the division of European national communities and persuaded some British to make their choice in favor of leaving the Union. Today, when such fears are heard from Poland, France, and Hungary, we have significant concerns about the possibility of a collective and timely decisive response to Moscow’s aggressive actions in the region.
The migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border is one of the Kremlin’s tools to urge the EU to negotiate with Russia to accelerate the launch of Nord Stream 2, reduce sanctions on Russia now, legalize its controlled terrorist organizations L-DNR (unrecognized organization in Donetsk and Luhansk regions), and recognize the annexed The Russian Federation of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol like Russian territory; return to the Minsk format of negotiations with weakened players to bargain for new conditions, especially concerning amendments to the Basic Law of Ukraine; justifying the spread of the Russian military to the West (especially about air support and strike training on northern Ukrainian cities) and much more. Russia is acting at all levels in all directions, taking advantage of the weakened EU and NATO, which may not recognize hybrid aggression as overt.
The crisis on the EU’s western border is taking place against the background of the signing of agreements (28 union programs) on further integration of Russia and Belarus within the one united state, which, in particular, approved the concept of a common migration policy and adopted an updated military doctrine. Through a large-scale operation threatening to break through NATO’s western border, Moscow plans to legitimize the government of unrecognized President Lukashenko by initiating talks between Minsk and Brussels to resolve the situation diplomatically and bring the regime out of political isolation.
The most important thing in the use of hybrid tools of the Russian Federation is the concealment or distortion of its role in destructive activities. Russian intelligence services are managing the migration crisis on the borders of the European Union, using a strategy similar to the one used by Russia in the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and still used in eastern Ukraine. Reduction of activity or tension should not be expected, on the contrary, the regimes isolated by the civilized world may take more radical steps: they will issue weapons confiscated by the police from criminals, give to migrants and provoke shootings at the border; will give out ignition mixes; it will itself lead to the death of migrants and throw bodies on Polish territory, accusing Warsaw of cruelty (Russians and Belarusians are so unpredictable that they can injure or kill young people); dig or use existing tunnels under the state border for provocations; Belarusians can change into Polish uniforms and provoke clashes with people and so on. Neither Moscow nor Minsk can be trusted in any case. They have once again proved that they finance terrorism and are a threat to international security.
Sources from the American publication Bloomberg in the White House note (article published 11.11.21) that the United States has warned its allies in Europe about planning a military operation to invade Ukraine in connection with the build-up of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border. Such concerns are based on evidence and trends that are similar to Russia’s preparations for the 2014 occupation of Crimea. That is why such a crisis on NATO’s borders did not coincide at all – it is an attempt to prioritize the protection of members, not Ukraine with the MAP (Membership Action Plan), and secondly, in the event of response and assistance from the Alliance to Ukraine, to provoke military conflict where the Organization’s forces in the minority, the use of missile systems or, moreover, nuclear weapons is out of the question. The Kremlin will continue to declare its innocence and provoke the West by invading Poland and Lithuania from Belarus.
US Chargé d’Affaires Courtney Ostrien told the OSCE Permanent Council on 11.11.21 that Russia is the main obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Moscow-led armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, that Russia’s military activity in and around Ukraine, along with the enemy. Kremlin rhetoric is unfounded and dangerously provocative. Russia must allow the OSCE SMM (Special Monitoring Mission) to carry out its mandate qualitatively and carry out the monitoring throughout the Russian-controlled TOT (temporarily occupied territories) of Ukraine. However, there are no changes here – rates are rising, and all parties are preparing for a possible escalation of the crisis soon.
There can be no reconciliation or stabilization of relations between the West and Russia on a consensual or compromise basis because Russian geopolitics is based on confrontation, not development through cooperation. It is impossible to agree with Putin, simply because he demands more and more impudently. Giving him Georgia in 2008, Ukraine fell victim in 2014; giving him the now occupied territories – in a few years there will be new aggression; giving Georgia and Ukraine under the right of occupation is to kindle fire and blood in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, the Union itself and Russia, which will begin to disintegrate through the internal struggle of the enslaved peoples, access to weapons and more. It would be a catastrophe for the world we know today, which is why it is so necessary to resist the wishes of the Kremlin, which in any case loses – through the occupied territories; sanction pressure; loss of population support; inability to compete in the world; his subjection to Beijing, and so on. It drove itself into a corner, and all offers to get out of the pressure with a saving face were ignored. Russia does not need a face, but the illusion of victories that will lead it to self-disintegration and escalation of ethnic-confessional conflicts in regions that have never been and will never be “Russian.”
Against the background of the migration crisis organized by Russia on the border of Belarus and Poland, holding Russian-Belarusian unscheduled airborne exercises in the Grodno region, Moscow demonstrates its strength and influence on the security situation in the region, thus testing the West’s response to the situation. And although several paratroopers were killed during the exercises, which once again shows the real readiness of the Russians for war in modern technological conditions, they are ready to use modernized Soviet scrap (which was often built in Ukraine) against modern European and American systems. What matters is not the training or lifting of 40-year-old planes, but the ability to strike at strategic targets, especially in Ukraine, which worries us greatly. They are ready to deliberately go to their deaths because 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, modern Russia has failed to give its citizens something for which it is worth not to die, but to live. Russia is doomed, but the most dangerous beast is a wounded beast.
