When will Russia annex Belarus?

[Woody]

It's only a matter of time really.

[Woody]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/op-ed-keep-your-eyes-on-russia-for-an-august-surprise-of-putins-making.html

Greater opportunity for Putin presents itself in a United States that’s distracted by the coronavirus spread, its own economic downturn, racial upheavals, polarizing November elections and divisions with and within Europe. With the chance that his friend President Donald Trump might lose the November election, Putin could calculate that now could be the time to seize new opportunities.

On that front, the first indicator could be Russian response to the Belarus election a week from Sunday on Aug. 9. Janusz Bugajksi of the Center for European Policy Analysis reckons that Putin could use “the pretext of growing unrest in Belarus and the disputed presidential elections” as a chance to act as national liberator with the “looming prospect” of the absorption of Belarus into Russia.

Following the arrest this week of 32 Russians at a sanatorium near Minsk, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko accused the Kremlin-linked Wagner military contractor of sending 200 of its mercenaries to destabilize his country ahead of his election, where he faces a challenge from three opposition groups

[Woody]

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have expressed confidence that all problems that had arisen in Belarus would soon be resolved, the Kremlin said.

“These problems should not be exploited by destructive forces seeking to harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.

He suggested the impact of the protests might spill beyond Belarus’s borders. “There is a need to contact Putin so that I can talk to him now, because it is not a threat to just Belarus any more,” said Lukashenko, according to the state news agency Belta.

He said: “Defending Belarus today is no less than defending our entire space, the union state… Those who roam the streets, most of them do not understand this.”

Little green men 2.0?

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/L_Team10/status/1383820775614910464?s=19