Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appeared to broadcast a planned Russian invasion of Moldova during an address to his security council Tuesday that was televised and posted online by the autocrat.
Lukashenko, a wartime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has called himself the “last dictator” in Europe, stood in front of a battle command map that appeared to show a planned attack from southern Ukraine into Moldova, a former Soviet republic that borders Ukraine and Romania.
The blatant invasion map divided Ukraine into four sections, where lines of attack it highlighted had already been executed by Russia, except for what appeared to be a planned attack of the Moldova breakaway state of Transnistria through Ukraine’s port of Odessa, Belarusian journalist Tadeusz Giczan noted.
An inset map of the US and Canada also bizarrely appeared on the huge chart of Eastern Europe, but nothing in the North American section was highlighted.
Lukashenko’s war map gave new credentials to reports that Belarus was planning to deploy its own troops to Ukraine, to bolster Russia’s invasion, which had become increasingly violent as the country failed to win decisive military victories.
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Russia last week sent ground troops into Ukraine through Belarus, which borders the war-torn country to the north.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian military intelligence warned that Russia was planning false flag operations in Moldova as a pretext for military intervention in Transnistria, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists, Al Jazeera reported.
