‘Blessed are the peacemakers’: Will Lukashenka send ‘Belarus peacekeeping battalions’ to Donbas?
The Belarusian leader has repeatedly shown his readiness to send Belarusian troops to Donbas. The idea of trying on a blue helmet haunts Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s mind. Will the concept of Belarus’s peacekeeping contingent grab world attention if diplomacy fails during the oncoming negotiations of the ‘Normandy quartet’?
Dangerous temptation
In October, 2014 Aliaksandr Lukashenka told Euronews he had been prepared to put Belarus lives on the line to secure peace.
“If necessary. But for me this would be a very dangerous and terrible thing to put my own soldiers at risk: if the Russians mistrust the West, and the West, Russia, if the USA and Russia mistrusted each other, and there is mistrust between the warring parties, I would have been putting my own armed forces in harm’s way to separate the conflicting parties,” he said.
By the moment of the interview Lukashenka must have realised that ‘the Minsk protocol’ was not being observed. And he jumped at the opportunity to pique the West alleging that Belarus had made a better proposal but they turned it down.
Minsk may host the talks in the Normandy format but Lukashenka has no influence on their progress at all. Indeed, if he tried on a peacekeeper helmet he would become an important political actor in the region. But Lukashenka does not seem to relish the prospect of receiving zinc coffins with dead Belarusians in the run-up to the 2015 presidential elections.
What units could head for Donbas?
Mass media reports the posibility of sending CSTO collective rapid response forces as peacekeepers to the east of Ukraine. The agreement on collective security does provide using these forces not only in the territory of its members but solely ‘in the interests of international security and in keeping with the law of participating countries’.
The procedure is really complicated; this will also lead to another stage of Russian intervention as every second soldier in CSTO forces is Russian.
See below: participation CSTO countries in collective rapid response forces (Russia – in grey colour, Kazakhstan – blue, Belarus – green)
Russian news portal versia.ru says with a reference to its own sorces that four peacekeeping battalions with total number of 1,500 are being formed in Belarus. But the information is not confirmed on the official level.
Interestingly, Belarus has already had its peacekeeping forces. 10 years ago a special company of contract soldiers was established in the Belarusian city of Vitsebsk. They undergo trainings in accordance with UN and NATO standards.
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But they are not enough to have a de-militarised zone between Ukrainian military and separatists of the so called DNR and LNR.
Lukashenka not wanted
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In fact, Lukashenka does not have anyone to send to Donbas – apart from reservists and conscript soldiers. Moreover, Ukraine and the EU fully realise that Minsk has been on the Kremlin’s short leash for years and consequently, it cannot remain neutral.
That is why the Belarusian President has never been invited to the Normandy format meeting. And there is every likelihood that mythical peacekeeping battalions will be waiting in the wings for long.
