Belorussian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s KGB security service has added two journalists to its terrorism list. Seeing as both individuals now live in Poland, and that terrorism is punishable by death in Belarus, this announcement must be seen as a threat to Polish sovereignty.
In turn, the United States should lead its NATO allies in warning Lukashenko that any extrajudicial action against Stepan Putilo and Roman Protasevich will be grounds for military retaliation. The creators of Nexta Live, an independent media outlet covering Belarus outside of Lukashenko’s insipid state media apparatus, the two men are helping to bring the truth of their nation out to the world. The truth, more specifically, that following his Aug. 9 Kim Jong Un-statistical-style theft of the presidential election, Lukashenko has embarked on a campaign of terror against his own people.
There seems little doubt that the KGB’s action is designed as a specific threat to Poland. Now listed under numbers 725 and 726 on the official Belorussian terrorism list, Putilo and Protasevich are also accurately referenced as residing in Warsaw. Already using a fake threat of NATO intervention as a cause for his increasingly bloody crackdown, Lukashenko’s action cannot simply be shrugged aside as posturing. Perhaps it is, but perhaps it isn’t.
The key point here is that while Lukashenko is probably rational enough to avoid using force on the soil of a NATO member state, his Russian handlers will see things differently. And having sacrificed his desire for national independence from Russia in return for its security support against the protests, Lukashenko is now a very obvious and obedient Putin pet. Attested by the Russian SVR intelligence service’s active measures campaign on Belarus, Moscow is both nervous and energized over the current political crisis. This terrorism listing thus gives Vladimir Putin a new foundation to use Belarus as a proxy with which to undermine NATO. Having Putilo and Protasevich attacked by the Belorussian KGB would enable the Russians to test whether, for example, Germany would support a robust NATO response. Everyone with a brain would know that Putin was ultimately responsible, but Putin strategizes that fear of Russian escalation would lead some NATO leaders to choose appeasement over confrontation.
Regardless, NATO’s confrontation of any attack in Poland, even if against non-Polish citizens, would be necessary. While a Russian invasion of Europe remains a remote possibility, it cannot be ruled out, especially in relation to the Baltic frontier states. Belarus takes on added importance to NATO’s security, here, in that Putin’s dominion over the former Soviet state gives him a geographic means to compress the Baltics and operate in the gray zone (no pun intended) against NATO.
