President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is ready to send police to neighbouring Belarus to quash opposition protests if they turn violent, in a show of support for the country's autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Mr Putin also praised the “restraint” of Belarusian riot police whose brutality towards peaceful demonstrators has compounded widespread anger over Mr Lukashenko’s disputed re-election this month, fuelling the biggest crisis of his 26-year rule.
The former Soviet state farm boss has described protesters as drunks and drug addicts manipulated by foreign "puppet masters", and he accuses neighbouring EU and Nato states Poland and Lithuania of posing a military threat to his country.
Mr Putin told Russian television on Thursday that a “union state” agreement and security pact between his country and Belarus obliged them to “help each other in defence of sovereignty, external borders and in defending stability”.
He said Mr Lukashenko had asked him to form a “reserve of officers from law enforcement agencies, and I did that” .
“But we also agreed that it would not be used as long as the situation doesn’t get out of control and extremist elements...using political slogans as cover, don’t cross certain lines and just go on the rampage – burning cars, houses, banks, trying to seize administrative buildings and so on.
“We...came to the conclusion that there is no need for this now, and I hope there will not be, and so we won’t use this reserve,” Mr Putin added.
He also echoed Mr Lukashenko’s unsubstantiated claims that other foreign powers were “meddling” in Belarus, by alleging that 33 Russian mercenaries who were arrested near Minsk shortly before the August 9th election were lured into the country as part of a trap laid by the “Ukrainian and US special services”.
Sanctions
Mr Putin insisted that Russia was behaving “objectively” in regard to Belarus, and “with much more restraint and neutrality...than many other countries, including European ones and the United States”.
The EU says the election was not democratic, and it is preparing sanctions against Belarusian officials who allegedly bear responsibility for vote fraud and police brutality. Foreign ministers from member states plan to discuss the crisis.
The bloc is also calling for dialogue between Mr Lukashenko and the opposition, but he accuses its “co-ordination council” of plotting to seize power. Its leaders have faced police questioning and two were jailed for 10 days this week.
Strike action at state factories that have long been bastions of support for Mr Lukashenko has further shaken his regime and weakened the Belarusian rouble.
“The main thing for us is the economy,” he told industry bosses on Thursday. “If our enterprises will work normally then no cataclysms will scare us. We’ll deal with the street no matter how much they want to destabilise the situation.”
