What was Moscow planning for Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus in 2021, just a few months before the invasion of Ukraine? This question is said to be answered by a secret Kremlin document, brought to light after a long journalistic investigation by international networks, including three German media, the NDR and WDR networks and the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

According to the document in question, Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin seem to have planned something much bigger than simply supporting the Belarusian leader in 2020, when citizens had taken to the streets en masse to demonstrate at any cost against his authoritarian regime.
Strategic plan for gradual annexation to the “Unified State”

According to the revealing 17-page document from the summer of 2021, Moscow had reportedly drawn up a detailed “strategic plan” for the gradual annexation of Belarus by 2030 with short-, medium- and long-term goals. It is actually divided into two main sections. First, to the strategic goals, with three key milestones in 2022, 2025 and 2030. Second, to the risks associated with achieving these goals.

However, the ultimate goal of the overall Russian project is reportedly the creation of a unique “Unified State”, an enlarged Russia, in other words, an integral part of which would be the now integrated Belarus. The process of gradual annexation based on the document envisages the use of economic and military means as well as extensive infiltration of state institutions and critical sectors of Belarusian society. In fact, Moscow seems to have been considering the basic idea of ​​the plan as early as 1999.

The road to “Great Russia”

The 2021 Russian document comes, according to research, from an administrative department of the so-called Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation. Western intelligence agencies rate this document as an authentic and reliable source.

It envisages, among other things, the radical constitutional revision at the behest of the Kremlin – which was already initiated by the Lukashenko government in 2022 -, the gradual unification of the armed forces of Belarus and Russia as well as the assurance of full Russian influence in the economy, politics, science , culture, education, mass media and of course in controlling the flow of information through modern communication networks. At the same time, the “new” Belarus would be completely cut off from the West and all contact with NATO countries would be excluded.

Sources from Western intelligence agencies even estimate that the 17-page document is part of a wider Kremlin plan to create a so-called “Greater Russia”, which, apart from Belarus and of course Eastern Ukraine, could in the future also include other areas such as the autonomous Abkhazia in Georgia.

However, the outcome of the war in Ukraine so far has allegedly frozen at least the short-term goals for Belarus, which concerned 2022 – for the fields of politics, defense, society and the economy – without, however, implying a complete reversal of the overall of the Kremlin’s plan for the “sister” state of Belarus.