by Gilbert Doctorow via Gilbert Doctorow
I direct the attention of my Russian speaking subscribers to the video recording of an important and most timely speech delivered this morning by President Alexander Lukashenko to the Parliament and nation of Belarus.
The speech is long and I suggest that you start listening from minute 20 when Lukashenko sets out his proposal for the immediate cessation of hostilities in Ukraine with no further movements of troops or military equipment by either side and for the opening of peace talks without preconditions.
After a brief recapitulation of what led up to the conflict in Ukraine and of his own deep involvement in efforts to snuff it out nine years ago through what we know as the Minsk Accords, Lukashenko goes directly to the present moment. Now, when, as he says, more than half a million casualties have been suffered by the armies at war. Now, when units at the front line on both sides have lost the appetite for more pointless deaths. Now, when the Russian war potential has not yet been fully unleashed. Now, when the risks of escalation grow before our eyes.
He asks the most famous question in Russian political thinking for more than a hundred years: Что делать? What is to be done? And he makes a passionate plea for Peace.
You, at Harvard, who hosted the Pretender to the Belarus throne Tikhanovskaya in Cambridge last week, Tikhanovskaya, who is backed by the pro-war Lithuanians and Poles: may you hang your heads in shame.
Belarus has an incumbent President at work in Minsk and he is doing his very best to bring peace to our very dangerous times.
Have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSZ0nzgESo
Post Script:
I did not put this in my essay, but you may find it useful to know:
First, there can be no doubt that Lukashenko conferred with Putin before making his appeal for an immediate cease fire. This is not because Putin fears defeat on the battlefield. It is because he has lost confidence in the sanity of the American political leadership and does not want to be goaded into further escalation.
Second, if you listen to Lukashenko’s arguments in the video you are astounded. He is saying that on the front lines the soldiers on both sides understand that they are being sent to their deaths for NOTHING. He says that Ukrainians are warning Russians of attacks about to be launched and Russians are doing the same for the Ukrainians who are maybe 50 meters away from them.
This is absolutely unknown to the likes of Ritter and MacGregor whose brilliance in military theory is irrelevant to the situation at hand. This, and the whole impassioned plea for a ceasefire, are totally ignored in the scrap of propaganda in today’s New York Times entitled “Belarus, echoing Russia, raises the prospect of nuclear conflict’ by their lead reporter for Eastern Europe, Andrew Higgins, based in Warsaw. The editors of the NYT must have 100 meter deep bomb shelters for themselves and family when they publish their war mongering texts that knowingly misinform their readership and refuse to follow the off-ramp that L. has just showed them.
