You may justify such meddling as diplomacy as usual, but the reality is it is war by any other name and is as morally defensible as any other war of aggression against any given target country. If successful, Belarus will be privatized, the country will have debt foisted on it and its resources will be plundered and its women will be turned into surrogacy machines for wealthy western couples while its men will be dispatched to Western Europe to work like slaves as gastarbeiters.
You can argue British "diplomacy" is on par with Russian efforts and you would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Russia has and will continue to make Belarus a partner. The Europeans will exploit it and it will become just another poodle, AKA cannon fodder for NATO, used as a proxy attack dog until it is so used up it can't even function as that.
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Craig's response, August 17, 2020 at 09:08, as per postcript cited above
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Don, August 17, 2020 at 11:57
Well, the tu quoque fallacy here is just a red herring which ignores my point that Russia has and will continue to treat Belarus as a partner. The people in her country will not end up like the Ukrainians or the 90s Russians as long as they don't give in to this color revolution.
Regarding Putin and Russia, I have lived in Russia for 16 years and am a naturalized citizen. Whatever opinions you've drawn living in the west, no matter how intellectually honest you've tried to keep yourself, it appears you are still under some serious misconceptions about the levels of freedom and quality of life enjoyed by the Russian people in comparison with, say, the US where I was born and raised.