Kremlin Planned To Absorb Belarus After Achieving Regime Change In Ukraine, New Document Shows – OpEd
By Paul Goble
The Dossier Center has obtained a Kremlin document which shows that Moscow intended to gradually absorb Belarus into the Russian Federation over the next decade after it achieved regime change in Ukraine by military means.
Russia’s inability to do the latter so far has in no way changed Moscow’s plans for the former, the center’s sources say.
The document, according to the Dossier Center, was prepared by the Presidential Administration together with the SVR, the FSB, the GRU and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and laid out specific tasks to be achieved over the next decade to make Belarus not part of a union with Russia but part of it (dossier.center/union-br/).
Entitled “The Strategy Goals of the Russian Federation in the Belarusian Direction” and dated 2021, the document shows that what the Kremlin is really planning for its Western neighbor is entirely different that what Putin and other Russian officials say publicly. Moscow isn’t interested in a new union state but in the suppression of Belarusian statehood altogether.
It is unknown whether similar policy documents exist regarding the future of other former Soviet republics, but it seems likely that if they are, they are likely to reflect the policies in this policy document rather than the words of Putin. Because that is so, this leak is likely to cause Belarusian and other non-Russian leaders to become more suspicious of Moscow.
