MOSCOW, 6 December (BelTA) – The migrant crisis is a continuation of the hybrid attack launched by the West against Belarus back in 2020, Igor Korotchenko, a military expert and Editor-in-Chief of the Russian magazine Natsionalnaya Oborona [National Defense] said at a round table in Moscow on 6 December, BelTA has learned.
“The current migrant crisis is a continuation of the hybrid war, the attempt to stage a coup and color revolution undertaken last year. President Aleksandr Lukashenko's response to the economic sanctions and unprecedented pressure on Belarus was quite natural. He said: Listen, I used to guard your borders, now excuse me, guard them on your own,” Igor Korotchenko stressed.
“It is important to note that all the attacks on Belarus, on official Minsk have to do with the failed attempt to stage the coup last year. Great intellectual, financial and political efforts were invested in this attempt,” the expert said.
Igor Korotchenko is convinced that the West wanted to do the same with Belarus and its leader Aleksandr Lukashenko as it did with the countries it destroyed during its intervention under the guise of establishing democracy there. This pertains to Iraq, Libya, Syria and others. “We remember that their leaders were destroyed, and their states were actually turned into dust,” he stressed.
“I am talking about an attempt, successful one for the West, to solve the problem of Iraq. They destroyed the legitimate leader, ruined the state. The reason for the intervention was the notorious test tube with white powder that Colin Powell [former U.S. Secretary of State] demonstrated to the UN Security Council. Everything was based on the intelligence data falsified by the CIA and the British MI6 to justify the Western military intervention in Iraq and further execution of Iraqi legitimate leader Saddam Hussein,” he added.
“I am not drawing parallels here, for example, in terms of authoritarianism or non-authoritarianism. In my opinion, Aleksandr Lukashenko is a tough president but quite democratic,” Igor Korotchenko said. “Belarus is an oasis of peace and prosperity in today's Europe. But his tough policy to protect the national interests, his unwillingness to follow the line imposed by Washington and Brussels were the reason why they tried to overthrow him.”
The expert also noted that the migrant problem is transnational in nature. “We are talking about a well-established illegal network of delivering migrants from the disadvantaged states destroyed by Western interventions to a prosperous European Union,” he said. “Former German Chancellor Mrs Merkel openly welcomed migrants to Germany. We remember those wonderful selfies that migrants took with Mrs Merkel. Of course, all this was widely publicized on Arab and African social networks so people naturally headed off to prosperous Europe using the well-established transnational route. The whole problem with the migrant crisis was designed for one reason only: to once again make Lukashenko look like an authoritarian ruler, a dictator, and to try, by linking him to Russia in this case, to activate the anti-Russian sentiment again.
Speaking about the actions of the EU law enforcers against migrants, Igor Korotchenko named them a gross violation of democratic standards. “The actions of the law enforcement agencies of the countries bordering on Belarus with regard to migrants are a flagrant violation of democratic norms. Who talks about or teaches us democracy? Take a look at the latest video from Brussels where peaceful demonstrators are attacked by water cannons in winter, with the use of all kinds of special police chemicals. It is not for the West to teach democracy to either Russia or Belarus. We ourselves define the standards and norms of democracy which best suit the development of our societies,” he stressed.
