Lukashenko’s Poor Wording Undermined His Point But He Never Intended To Contradict Putin

To be fair, Lukashenko was ad-libbing and not reading from a prepared statement, which explains his poor wording and the reason why the Mainstream Media could spin his words about Belarus’ robust border security the way that they did.

The Mainstream Media is having a ball after what Belarusian President Lukashenko said about the Crocus terrorists’ escape from Moscow. He meant to discredit false claims that they intended to hide out in his country, but his poor wording undermined his point by appearing to contradict what his Russian counterpart claimed about them attempting to flee to Ukraine. What follows are his exact words as reported by publicly financed BelTA, which will then be analyzed to clarify exact what he meant:

“They could not enter Belarus. Their handlers (we have suspicions about some of them, I’ll call Putin and share my suspicions) knew that it would be a very bad idea to try to enter Belarus, because Belarus immediately reinforced security measures, just like a part of the oblast in Russia. In the very first minutes, I received a report from the KGB chief (he is involved in anti-terrorist activities).

We put our units on combat alert, including forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Checkpoints were set up on roads, including on roads connecting Belarus with Russia; the forces of the KGB, the State Border Committee, and some military units were deployed. That’s why there was no chance they could enter Belarus. They realized it. So they took a turn and headed to the Ukraine-Russia border.”

The first thing that he did was reaffirm that it would have been impossible for the terrorists to flee from Russia to Belarus, which he explained on the basis that their unnamed handlers – who FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov believes might be the US, UK, and Ukraine – knew better than to attempt that. What Lukashenko didn’t explain was how they would have known about Belarus’ robust border security efforts in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but that arguably would have been taken for granted.

After all, it’s standard protocol for Belarus to ramp up border security right after a terrorist attack in Russia, which it did following Darya Dugina’s and Vladlen Tatarsky’s assassinations out of an abundance of caution in case the perpetrators sought to exploit those two’s practically borderless Union State ties. The Crocus terrorists’ handlers would have therefore assumed that the same procedures would be implemented after the attack that they were planning and thus wouldn’t have sent their proxies there.

As for those fleeing terrorists, they couldn’t have seen the aforesaid procedures in place since they hadn’t crossed into Belarus, which is why it’s inadvertently misleading to state that “they took a turn and headed to the Ukraine-Russia border” instead. Apropos of the symmetrical procedures implemented on the Russian side of the border, those forces either helped intercept the terrorists or were still beyond the range that they traveled since it’s unrealistic to imagine that they saw them but didn’t react.

Lukashenko’s remark about how “They realized” how Belarus reinforced its border therefore refers to their unnamed handlers, not the fleeing terrorists, with the part about the latter “[taking] a turn” being his way of saying that they were told to go directly to Ukraine instead of trying to cross via Belarus. To be fair, Lukashenko was ad-libbing and not reading from a prepared statement, which explains his poor wording and the reason why the Mainstream Media could spin his words the way that they did.

Upon analyzing the official transcript of his remarks, it’s clear that he only wanted to boast about Belarus’ robust border security in response to false claims that the terrorists wanted to flee there, whether to hide out indefinitely or before crossing into Ukraine. His off-the-cuff comments provided fodder for anti-Russian propagandists to stir trouble between him and President Putin, but this latest divide-and-rule provocation will fail since the Russian leader knows what he meant to convey.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/lukashenkos-poor-wording-undermined