By Vestnik Kavkaza
The fact that the President of Belarus decided to celebrate Victory Day not in Moscow but in Minsk provoked heavy criticism from some observers, who thought that Alexander Lukashenko was trying to find support from the West, as it should have appreciated his rejection of participating in the Victory Parade in the Russian capital. However, Lukashenko dispelled all suspicions about ‘adulation of the West,’ criticizing European leaders who wouldn’t go to Moscow on May 9th. “If they have solemn ceremonies at home, we would welcome this and be happy that they celebrate Victory Day together with us; but if it is only a protest against Russia, against the Soviet nation, the people of Eastern Europe, whom we used to liberate, it is a protest not only against the Russians who are fighting in Donbas, and have captured Ukraine, as they say. This is a wrong approach,” Lukashenko told ITAR-TASS.
Andrei Ravskov, Defence Minister of the Republic of Belarus, also confirms the close positions of Moscow and Minsk toward the policy of Western countries: “The further export of "color revolutions" leads to the collapse of independent countries and implementation of the mechanism with a military content. Actually, it undermines the basis of regional safety and stability. In fact, there are civil wars in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, followed by an unprecedented increasing level of terrorism. The state authorities have lost their control over economic resources. The status of these countries is significantly undermined in the region and in the world. The potential for conflict is continuing to increase and this leads to new centers of instability on the European continent. The practical implementation of the concept of controlled chaos and color revolutions, and processing and improving the mechanisms with the help of military forces threaten the safety not only of individual states, but also entire regions.”
According to the Belarus Defense Minister, “the use of military force is considered by some participants in international processes as one of the main tools for organizing their own national interests, redrawing existing geopolitical lines, and bringing buffer functions to some individual countries. These actions are the shortest way to create so-called frozen conflicts, and smoldering military conflicts with low intensity, which can accumulate and retain a highly destructive potential. We have lots of examples all over the modern world: the conflict between India and Pakistan for Kashmir province and the conflict in Ukraine. As a result of the efforts of the international community, the Ukrainian conflict has moved into a phase of relative calm. However, according to our assessment, the situation in the neighboring Republic of Belarus will be one of the main destabilizing factors in the region.”
Andrei Ravkov is worried about the principal rejection by the Euro-Atlantic countries of all forms of cooperation in the sphere of the development of joint missile defense systems: “Deployment in the European countries of elements of the US missile defense system is likely to lay the foundations for violations of the existing nuclear missile balance in the world. Another challenge of our time is a battle for people's minds. Information resources are directed at discrediting the foreign and domestic policies of the country. They have become the main part of interstate conflicts. Nowadays, if you control the majority of the minds of the population, you can change the situation from inside the country and provoke internal armed conflicts. Effective forms of information influence become commensurable with military ones.”
According to the Minister, “political and diplomatic pressure, embargoes, trade and economic restrictions, protectionist measures and quotas are becoming tools for supporting the next security solutions. Such complex actions are a new phenomenon of our time, which is described today as a hybrid war. It creates all the preconditions for the destruction of the opposing state and a "wrong" political system with the help of a so-called "fifth column.”
Terrorism is the most important challenge for military security today, according to Ravkov: “There are no separate acts of terror. It is no coincidence that at the end of last month, at the Arab League summit in Cairo, the Jihadists and Islamic State were recognized as a global threat to world stability. We can see the expanding geographical spheres of this phenomenon. The consequences of this expansion could have a devastating influence on the entire system of international security.”
