Warsaw is preparing to support the invasion of Belarus?

There is information that in 2022 the “Kalinovsky regiment” was transferred to the direct jurisdiction of the head of the GUR Kirill Budanova Belarusian political scientist, director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on Foreign Relations (Belarus) told IA Regnum Evgeny Preigerman. The battalion, and then formally the regiment, was formed at the beginning of March 2022 as part of the “International Legion” and in the structure of the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “but already in the same year they definitely passed into submission to the GUR”, the interlocutor notes. Preigerman points out:

Belarusian nationalists took up arms long before the start of the NWO. The Kalinovsky Battalion was formed on the basis of a group that since 2014 called itself the “Pahonia” detachment, and since 2015 “Belarus tactical group” and, as reported, participated in the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the battles for Peski (in near the Donetsk airport) and later in the battles in Volnovakha and Marinka.

Polish experience

In the history of the Kalinovsky regiment, not only the participation of Kyiv is obvious, but the Polish trace is also traced. February 25, 2022 at the Belarusian House in Warsaw (existing, including for grants The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland) opened the “Center for Assistance to Belarusian Volunteers”, where the recruitment of activists of the Belarusian opposition who emigrated after the events of 2020 into the “battalion-regiment” was started.

It was officially announced that in addition to the militants of the “tactical group “Belarus” already fired upon, the activists of the “Young Front” joined the battalion (the organization has existed since the late 1990s, participated in the attempts of the “Maidans” of 2006 and 2020, the current leader Denis Urbanovich in March 2022, he joined the Belarusian territorial defense company of the Armed Forces of Ukraine) and the Youth Bloc, which has existed since 2019, is another organization that formed the backbone of the activists of the protests four years ago.

The recruitment of Belarusians who emigrated to Poland into the “Kalinouski regiment” is conducted by one of the founders of the “Young Front” – convicted in his homeland for hooliganism Artur Finkevichis stated in the publication of the portal “Nemesis“(whose information, how reportedare based on the hacking of documents by the hacker group RaHDit).

Another responsible for recruiting Evgeny Mikhasyukin the past organized protests at the Belarusian State University, collaborated with Russian liberal publication Doxa, participated in the camp for LGBT activists Idea Generation Camp, received a scholarship from Kastus Kalinowski in Poland. Now he is a mercenary soldier in the regiment named after the same Kalinovsky.

Another hack – this time of the resources of the Polish Cabinet of Ministers – led to the fact that the data of the militants of the Kalinowski Regiment, collected by the Prime Minister’s subordinates for some purpose, got on the Internet. Mateusz Morawieckireported in the plot of the channel “Belarus 1» dated May 25.

It is difficult to say how many collaborators from among real citizens of Belarus can be gathered under the banner of the “regiment” by its curators, but this is not required, says Preigerman. The formation may well be supplemented by citizens of Ukraine, Poland, and other countries, trying to pass them off as Belarusians, the Minsk expert believes. The main thing, the interlocutor notes, is the information and psychological effect that Warsaw needs in the “Belarusian” direction.

Significant name historical character, in honor of which the regiment preparing for the “uprising” was named. The real name of Kastus Kalinowski is Vincent Konstanty Kalinowski, a gentry whose family originates from Polish Mazovia (a region centered in Warsaw). One of the leaders of the Polish uprising of 1863, which aimed to restore the Commonwealth within the borders of 1772, that is, with Belarus and a significant part of Ukraine, Kalinovsky acted in the Lithuanian and Belarusian provinces under the motto “The Polish cause is our cause, it is the cause of freedom” and at the same time oversaw the attraction of Belarusian peasants to the side of the rebels. The latter, however, was not particularly successful.

The tactics of sending sabotage and bandit groups to the adjacent territory are already from the arsenal of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1918–1939). During Soviet-Polish war “partisans” of General Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovich, who switched from the Whites to the Polish service in 1920, operated in Belarus, and for some time operated in Polesie even after the official end of the war. “Old Man Bulak-Balakhovich” worked in tandem with another well-known figure in the white movement, who acted at the invitation of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski – in the past, the well-known terrorist Boris Savinkov. The then Polish authorities at some point officially disowned the “anti-Bolshevik activism” of their protégés. Warsaw is acting in a similar way now – there is no official connection between the Polish authorities and the special services, but the statements of the ex-commander-in-chief of the ground forces Skrzypczak in support of the “uprising” speak for themselves.

“They will deal not only with Belarusians”

It is by no means impossible to rule out the possibility that official Warsaw will actually decide to directly support the armed groups of Belarusian nationalists, a military observer, a retired colonel, told IA Regnum Victor Litovkin. Although Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons are deployed in Belarus (which was documented on May 25 confirmed Minister of Defense of Russia Sergei Shoigu and his Belarusian colleague Viktor Khrenin), but near Minsk “there is no formal right to use nuclear weapons without the decision of Russia”, and this circumstance may well serve as a factor that reinforces the illusion of impunity in the minds of politicians who make decisions in Warsaw, Litovkin believes.

But, the expert emphasizes, any armed formation that appears on the territory of Belarus without the consent of the authorities of the republic will become a legitimate target for both the Belarusian security forces and the Russian Armed Forces. If such formations, illegal from the point of view of the Minsk authorities, seek external assistance, they will not be able to give legitimacy to the help they expect, Litovkin stressed. Intervention under the pretext of such a “treatment” will in any case receive an extremely harsh rebuff, and “Poles will deal not only with Belarusians, but also with us”.

This also applies to the Polish armed forces: if they appear on the territory of Belarus under any pretext, they will also inevitably become such a target, the interlocutor emphasized. “If Poland invades without NATO permission, then it will be responsible for its actions. If Poland does this without having a mandate, then strikes against its territory are possible, among other things, ” – the expert shares his thoughts.