Window on Eurasia: A Million Belarusians Ready to Fight Putin If He Invades, Poll Finds

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, September 9 – Although many analysts are now suggesting that Vladimir Putin is preparing for the Anschluss of Belarus, a new poll finds than one in seven Belarusians is prepared to fight to defend the independence of that country, an attitude that could make any effort by Putin less like the Crimean operation and more like the one in the Donbas.

 

            Two days ago, Andrey Illarionov told an interviewer that Putin is planning to continue his plans for “the reunification of the largest divided people in the world,” the Russians who are now subdivided into Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Belorussians (http://www.szona.org/ilarionov-putin-mirovaia-voina/).

 

            That means, he continued, that Putin wants to include within the borders of a single country the Russian Federation, Belarus, part of Ukraine and Northern Kazakhstan. Considering what has been said recently, “Belarus is first in line for ‘reunification,’ that is, for an Anschluss,” the Russian commentator said.

 

            Indeed, he said, “the question consists not in whether such a policy will be realized or not but when and under what conditions it will be.”  The “most favorable conditions” for it, Illarionov said, might include “presidential elections in Belarus, the departure of the present president of Belarus as a result of natural or other causes, a decision of the Belarusian authorities to leave the Eurasian Union or … the beginning of a rapprochement of Belarus in economics or in the security sphere.”

 

            But a Belarusian Anschluss might not be the cake walk that Putin and many others expect.  This week, Yury Gubarevich, first deputy chairman of the Belarusian Movement ‘For Freedom, said that “Belarusians are ready to defend the independence of their country with arms in their hands” (camarade.biz/node/15624).

 

            The Belarusian activist who is an opponent of Alyaksandr Lukashenka said that “sociological surveys” show that “about 14 percent of Belarusians are ready to take up arms to defend their country.  This is more than a million people, a sufficiently alrge number of people for whom independence of the country is something valued.”

 

            “The understand,” Gubarevich said, “that in the case of necessity, one must take active measures to defend sovereignty.”