Lukashenko: Belarusian opposition wants to seize part of country and call in NATO

Members of the Belarusian opposition want to seize part of the country before establishing their own rule and calling in NATO forces to defend them, the country’s ruler Alexander Lukashenko claimed at a congress of Belarusian officials and industry leaders in Minsk on Thursday.

Speaking on the second day of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, Lukashenko alleged that opposition activists planned to capture the Kobryn district of Belarus’s southwestern Brest region, which straddles the country’s borders with Ukraine and Poland.

He did not offer any evidence to support his claims or details as to how the alleged plan to capture the district would work, saying only that members of the opposition planned to “seize it, declare their authority, appeal to NATO [and] bring in troops”.

The Belarusian leader went on to threaten repercussions for the family members of exiled opposition activists who challenged his rule, warning “anyone who plans to attack Belarus” not to put their relatives still in the country “at risk”.

Lukashenko further alleged that the United States was preparing an underground “Belarusian liberation army” to oust him, with the head of the country’s KGB Ivan Tertel claiming that 1,000 “militants” had undergone training in Ukraine and 300 in Poland as part of a plan to attack Belarus.

Tertel also alleged that the Belarusian security services had thwarted a drone attack on Minsk supposedly launched from Lithuania, where many exiled Belarusians are based, in claims Lithuanian officials quickly dismissed as “disinformation”.

“It’s nonsense that Lithuania would carry out a drone strike on Belarus, I cannot find any other word for it”, Lithuanian military spokesperson Gintautas Ciunis told the country’s national broadcaster LRT.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said the Belarusian leadership’s claims of a drone attack showed that Lukashenko had “exclusive access to an alternative reality that we can’t see”, while her advisor Franak Viačorka called him a “bandit and criminal holding nine million people hostage”.