Putin’s Closest Ally Is Preparing for World War III

Concerns over a third world war are legitimate, Belarus’ leader said on Tuesday, as the country’s Russia-aligned leadership solidified plans to be “prepared as much as possible” for future confrontation.

“The world has again come to the brink of the abyss,” Belarus’ strongman leader, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Tuesday during a meeting with senior officials in the country’s capital, Minsk.

“We must be prepared as much as possible to neutralize risks and threats,” he said in remarks carried by the state-run BelTA news agency. “There are grounds for concern” about a third world war, he added.

The full-scale war in Ukraine, which will reach the 2-year mark later this week, has heightened global fears of a wider conflict spilling over Ukraine’s borders. The ongoing conflict is the largest in Europe since World War II, and references to the possible use of nuclear weapons have ratcheted up anxieties at a time when other conflicts are flaring up across the world.

Belarus, a close and firm ally of Russia, was a springboard for Moscow’s forces to launch the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin has moved tactical nuclear weapons to the country, which has also played host to Wagner Group mercenaries after their departure from Russian soil.

But Belarus is not known to have committed troops to Russia’s fight in Ukraine, and has advocated for a ceasefire, although it regularly follows the Kremlin’s line on geopolitics. It holds joint military drills with Moscow, and training with the Wagner mercenaries has “yielded results,” Lukashenko said.

NATO is currently carrying out its largest military exercise in Europe since the 1990s, dubbed Operation Steadfast Defender, with around 90,000 troops participating over several months.

Referencing the drills, Lukashenko said Minsk’s intelligence agencies were “keeping their finger on the pulse,” claiming that approximately 32,000 troops from NATO members were deployed “in the immediate vicinity of Belarus and Russia.”

“I would like to characterize the current phase of the civilizational confrontation between East and West as follows: the masks have been completely dropped,” Lukashenko said on Tuesday.

“We need to acknowledge how serious the situation is,” he continued.

Two new divisions of S-400 anti-aircraft systems are now in service with the country’s military, Lukashenko said, referring to mobile, surface-to-air missile systems that are considered a rough equivalent to U.S. Patriot air defenses. Another two divisions are equipped with Iskander-M missile systems, he said.

Belarus has strengthened ties with Russia since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Last month, Minsk and Moscow inked new deals that Putin said showcased a “genuine alliance and strategic partnership between Russia and Belarus.”