“Let’s Keep a Close Eye on Belarus in the Coming Months”

• Olga Lautman
• 24.08.2026, 12:54

Putin could use Belarusian territory to escalate the conflict.

Could Putin launch a war against NATO countries? Should we expect an attack on the Baltic states from Belarusian territory? How can the war in Ukraine be stopped?

Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), answered these and other questions in an interview with Charter97.org.

— Given the average rate of advance of the Russian troops over the territory of Ukraine, it would take them approximately 150 years to come to the outskirts of Kyiv. Not to take the city, just to come to the outskirts. What are Putin's hopes in continuing this war?

— I would also add that the current approximate lifespan of people on the front lines that Russia is sending is about 20 to 30 minutes, so combine that with these 150 years and that shows you the picture.

Putin went into this wanting to conquer Ukraine. He doesn't believe that Ukraine is an independent sovereign country. He stated as the goal that he wanted to erase entire Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian literature and the Ukrainian nation as a state. He doesn't have any options but to continue with this goal, because if you look back at Soviet history, there is no one leader who attempted an imperial conquest who failed and survived being in power. Putin's only option is to continue going (or otherwise be overthrown by insiders in Russia for being weak). He cannot stop.

For anyone in the international community, who talks about negotiations, they don't understand the Russian imperial mindset. This I'd argue is absurd because there's nothing to negotiate. Ukraine is a sovereign country that was invaded violently. The only way to end this is for Russia to get out. Anyone who thinks that negotiations with the Russians and the Kremlin works clearly doesn't know Soviet history and Russian mentality.

“Putin Can’t Stop”

— Putin, in his mind, has no choice but to continue pushing forward even at this snail's pace?

— Absolutely, because the insiders around him — the security services — will not let it stand for him to have dragged Russia into this without accomplishing the goals. He understands that and looking back at Soviet history, there is not one ruler who survived who was weak, looked weak, or looked like he was surrendering.

“Russia Has Been Waging War Against Europe for More Than a Decade”

— How real are the threats from Russia to a NATO state in the upcoming weeks or months?

— I think the threat is very real. There have been a lot of alarm bells going off from US intelligence about a kinetic attack.

Russia has been waging a war across Europe. It started this war arguably in the mid-2000s, when they used polonium to assassinate Litvinenko on British soil. Then after that — Estonia, 2007 where Russia used a whole hybrid warfare toolkit: carrying out a cyber attack against its government and financial institutions and at the same time inciting ethnic Russians with disinformation to come out and protest — all because Estonia, a sovereign country, wanted to move a Soviet statue from the middle of their capital to the outskirts. After that, they continued on with the invasion of Georgia. Since then, in 2014, the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, all across Europe, you have seen Russia cutting cables under the sea, carrying out many assassinations, arson attacks, attacking every single election, disinformation operations, information warfare. They have been at war with Europe for over a decade.

They have increased their war with Europe, I would say, since the full-scale invasion, and more so after the summit that Putin had with Trump in Alaska. We saw an uptick immediately: a drone incursion into Polish airspace, GPS jamming targeting the EU Commissioner von der Leyen as she was landing in Bulgaria (which can be viewed as an assassination attempt). From there it continued. We've seen numerous drone swarms in Sweden, in Norway, all across Europe, by airports, sensitive military locations, critical infrastructure. We saw the terrorist attack Russia planned in Germany last week, where they had an explosive on a drone and were preparing to blow up a Ukrainian cargo plane. That's the same airport, by the way, where in 2024 Russia had a plot where Russia was planning to put incendiary devices on DHL planes headed to the United States and Canada. Then we see the continued drone incursions into Romania. This continued on, and unfortunately Europe doesn't want to connect it and see that Russia launched a war against Europe over a decade ago.

But as far as a more kinetic attack against a NATO country — absolutely, Russia is looking for distraction. They can easily hit another country. Will we see Russia moving tanks across? I don't think so. The new way of warfare is using drones. Тhey can absolutely use drones to bomb critical infrastructure, and at the same time carry out their information warfare operations.

— If we were to apply Russian terminology, everything you have mentioned could be described as active measures — so far, that's what happened. But do you think this time they can go beyond? I hear you, no tanks, but could it be something bigger than just yet another one active measure?

— I think that they can actually make it executable, because up to now what Russia has been doing is leaving its fingerprints in carrying out all these attacks, but without taking full credit for it. They use plausible deniability — they well know this, but they're not claiming it at the time of every attack. Here, I think they can go to a point where they do want to actually test whether Article 5 will be initiated with the United States out of the picture. Right now, anyone in Europe who thinks the US is a reliable partner needs to wake up — it is up to Europe now on its own to figure out what they will do with NATO and how it even works without the United States. How do you initiate Article 5 without having all members activate this article and take up an appropriate response? We are in uncharted territory, but at the end of the day, Russia may use this to see how far they can go. They can carry out swarms of drones more seriously. We see what happens every single day across all of Ukraine, with drones bombing buildings and missile attacks. We could see something very similar happening in Europe, in Poland, or maybe a Baltic country, or Romania — Russia can pick any country.

”Let’s Keep an Eye on Belarus in the Coming Months”

— How much should the people of Belarus be worried? Is there a likelihood that Russia could use Belarusian territory for that new step in increasing the stakes?

— With Belarus, I'd be very concerned. Russia softly annexed Belarus in 2020, when they came to prop up Lukashenka and sent FSB senior officials to help squash the protests very violently — at that point Lukashenka basically gave up the sovereignty of Belarus in exchange for staying in power with Russian assistance. I absolutely would be concerned.

Another thing that should be very concerning is the Suwałki corridor which has been a blind spot for NATO — Russia, along with Belarus, can use that corridor to seize it and connect Kaliningrad to Belarus. That would be an immediate danger to Lithuania and Poland. Lukashenka tries to still push back and stall (if he was fully under Russia's control, he would have been forced to send military to Ukraine). He has so far stalled Russia's demands to send a Belarusian army to fight in Ukraine. But at the same time, Russia has full control of Belarusian territory, and when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, they used Belarus to cross over into Ukraine. So yes, I would be very worried. Again, we might not see tanks crossing over, but we've already seen Russia use Belarus to carry out its migrant operation, sending migrants from the Middle East to Belarus to put pressure and push on the Lithuanian and Polish borders. We can continue seeing a whole combination of these kinds of activities.

Last year in September, when Russia became even more emboldened after meeting with Trump and getting the red carpet literally rolled out for Putin, Belarus was potentially used to send drones into Polish territory. So yes, I would keep an eye on Belarus.

“What Could Be a Better Distraction Than Starting a War With NATO?”

— One thing I don't understand is why — it's not like the Russian murderous shenanigan in Ukraine is going "according to the plan". What is Putin's goal in raising the stakes this time?

— It's to cause chaos and distraction. It's a similar thing that Trump is doing. Trump domestically has been suffering since he came back to power, so what is a better way to distract than to launch an operation in Venezuela to drag their leader out and bring him into the US, and then following that, to get into conflict with Iran. The point is distraction — dictators and thugs look to distract from one thing with another thing. Domestically, Russia does need this distraction after Ukraine took the war to Russia on Russian soil. Russians, who for the most part avoided any feeling of Russia's genocidal war in Ukraine, pretty much continued with their cafés and restaurants and lived as if all is normal. Now they are experiencing it for themselves: seeing explosions at oil refineries and Wildberries storage facilities, or waiting for hours for gasoline. There is discontent growing inside Russia, because all of this shows that Putin is very weak.

Russians have portrayed Ukrainians as artificial people — these "fake people" bring the war inside of Russia. All of this is making the Kremlin look very weak, and they need a distraction. What is a better distraction than to start a war with NATO? I even worry that Russia may cause a false flag operation inside Russia, blame NATO for it, and say they have no choice but to respond. That scenario I would actually see as even more likely — putting themselves into victim status, saying that NATO carried out a military operation on Russian territory and therefore they must respond to NATO, and then use Belarus or other means to respond. But at the end of the day, this is what they all do — distract, distract, "look over here". While Russia's war in Ukraine isn't going well — distract with something else.

— You mentioned discontent about Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory. How do you estimate, in your view, do these Ukrainian long-range sanctions impact the Russian economy in any material way?

— Absolutely. Ukraine has been asking to strike inside Russia for quite some time. Now Ukraine's hands are no longer tied, so it can carry out operations across Russia.

Wildberries is like the equivalent of Amazon, and besides the fact it's used for military logistics, every single warehouse that is destroyed means people losing their merchandise, which is having a big impact on the Russian economy. So do the strikes on the oil refineries, because Russia's oil exports are what fuel its genocidal war in Ukraine. All of this is having an impact. But more so, it is also a psychological impact, because Russians for the most part felt immune to the war — not only immune, they cheered the war, "Once Ukraine is done, Moldova is next, then another country is next", — the Russian population have so many imperialistic ambitions. Now when they are actually seeing strikes inside Russian territory, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and have to deal with air raid sirens, they are actually getting a taste of exactly what Russia is doing in Ukraine (the difference is that Ukraine is not striking Russian apartment buildings and burying Muscovites — Ukraine is striking logistical targets, unlike Russia, whose strategic targets every single day are apartment buildings, residential buildings where Ukrainians are sleeping). This is all having an impact on Russia. Economically they are already stressed, and this is definitely going to put more pressure on the economy, but I would caution about people being excited, because Russians, as anyone from the Soviet Union knows, can endure and are expected to endure very harsh circumstances, even if it's standing in lines for breadcrumbs for hours. So it's not going to have an immediate effect. It's not going to cause Russians to say, "That's it, we need to overthrow Putin because economically things are bad". The same thing in Iran: the US is using the logic that economic pressure inside Iran is going to make the Iranian people rise up. They don't understand the system. Similarly, with Russia — you need to understand the system and how it works.

With all that said, it's very good that this is happening, and Ukraine needs to continue, not only with more frequency, but expanding their targets — showing that they can take out a Zircon missiles-production plant, an oil refinery, a Wildberries warehouse or a facility of other company assisting the military and moving military goods. In sum, this is very useful, and it's definitely a good strategy.

“Give Them an Inch, and the Russians Will Come Back and Take Miles of Territory.”

— How to end this war?

— How to end this war? This is where Europe and the United States were wrong — is because the United States had this absurd escalation management, where they did not want to anger Russia. I'm not talking about Trump, that's a different case, but even prior to Trump — every policy in the US and Europe was with Russia at the center.

At the end of the day, we have to remember that Ukraine is a sovereign country. Ukraine got invaded. Russia has committed war crimes, genocide in Ukraine. Russia's stated goal is genocide, and Europe needs to stop putting Russia at the center of its policy and put Ukraine at the center. The only way to end this is by providing Ukraine everything needed to defeat Russia, because the only way this will end is for Russia to be defeated. To get out of Ukraine — and that's it, there is no other way. You don't give these war criminals one inch of territory. Give them an inch, they will come back and take miles of territory. Give them miles, they'll come back and take cities of territory. You cannot appease them, and you need to set a deterrent for other countries. With this weakness by Europe and the United States in allowing this to drag on — if they had armed Ukraine in 2022-2023, this would have been finished at that time, before Russia really solidified. If Ukraine had all the weapons needed to destroy Russia, and the intent was to allow Ukraine to destroy Russian positions inside Ukraine, this would have been ended. But unfortunately the policy was to give Ukraine enough just to survive, and not to let Russia push further in.

This sends a very dangerous signal to China, who's watching, and to Tehran and North Korea — we are watching the alignment between them strengthen. They are all assisting each other. As a worst-case scenario, China could think of invading Taiwan simultaneously and in coordination with Russia hitting a NATO country, in order to cause more chaos and pin Europe down because they don't have enough resources to help Taiwan and at the same time defend their own continent. As another scenario, China and North Korea could think of putting pressure on South Korea, Japan and Taiwan at the same time. They are all working in concert together on all these continents.

The way to end it is for Ukraine to be armed fully, and for Europe to understand that their policy needs to be — not worrying about the collapse of Russia — but worrying about the sovereignty of a country, and setting a deterrent so that no other country can think it can safely invade a sovereign country and get away with it.