A threat to Belarus’ independence should be the key issue in the country’s information space, prominent emigre politician Zyanon Paznyak believes.
“The wargame of Russian forces in Belarus is scheduled. […] By now, it is not known when and where these exercises will be held. The details are classified. Nevertheless, the facts we are already aware of cause great concern,” Paznyak said.
Russia’s tactics of seizing territories is widely known, the politician says and refers to the Soviet Union’s invading Baltic countries in in 1939-40.
“Do not have any illusions that such thing could not happen. After all, this has already happened in Ukraine.”
Putin’s regime needs a ‘light victorious war’, Paznyak stresses and warns that Russia has been preparing for the attack for a long time.
“Whatever is going on in the world should be on the sideline for us. What is going on in our own country matters the most. Now the main thing is what way we will be defending our freedom,” he sums up.
Zyanon Paznyak, 72, Chairman of the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People’s Front, became one of the founders of the Belarusian People’s Front in late 80s. Historian and archeologist Paznyak discovered Kurapaty, an area on the outskirts of Minsk, in which a vast number of people were executed between 1937 and 1941 during the Stalinist Purge. The discovery and exhumation of the remains in 1988 gave an added momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus in the last years of the Soviet Union’s existence.
After Alyaksandr Lukashenka became president of Belarus in 1994 the contrast between the two politicians only sharpened. He led the first mass protests against the methods of Lukashenka’s rule, which later became known as Spring 1996. After a wave of political repression, Zyanon Paznyak emigrated to the West.
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Belsat.eu
