Recently, the promotion of additional Russian military forces to combat duty on the territory of Belarus has been widely discussed, and especially the statement of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko about the country’s readiness for war on the side of Russia. The situation for IA REGNUM was commented by the Minister of South Ossetia Dmitrii Medoev.
IA REGNUM: This week you said in an interview that Georgia can provide its territory for the needs of NATO forces in the context of supporting Ukraine before the imaginary “Russian invasion” on this country. What did you mean?
I mean exactly what I said. Georgia is doing everything possible to join the next anti-Russian attack, which involves almost all European countries. It is Washington, of course, who is commanding the parade. And we here, in South Ossetia, are extremely concerned about this development, especially since we are due to hold presidential elections in early April, and nearby the Georgian authorities are again holding regular exercises with the appropriate name “Georgia-NATO 2022”. How can we be in such conditions?
We have stressed before that between South Ossetia and Russia, in fact and de jure, a common defense space based on a contractual basis has been formed. Naturally, the Russian military contingent located on our territory under bilateral agreements becomes the target of a possible attack, as well as the South Ossetian armed forces. It is clear to me that the western coalition, provoking a war in Ukraine, would like to open a second front in Georgia. This is obvious from the point of view of Western strategy, and also given the need for information support for this entire campaign, because everyone needs to be shown that they, the liberators from Russian occupation, have brought democracy to the peoples.
IA REGNUM: What way out do you see?
To strengthen general security, and not only of an applied nature, but also of a contractual and legal one. I would like to draw your attention to a circumstance that is very interesting in this sense. South Ossetia has more than 100 high-level agreements signed with the Russian Federation, the most important of which are defense and security, customs affairs and the border, cooperation in the international arena and others. But it looks like all this does not apply to the union state of Russia-Belarus. At first sight. As we can see, the current military-political crisis around Ukraine has exposed these issues. It turns out that now we have a common defense space not only with Russia, but in fact with Belarus as well.
IA REGNUM: Are you implying that the actual situation should be translated into de jure relations?
I’m not hinting, it’s obvious from the point of view of international law, as well as the fact that if necessary, whether de jure or de facto, we will defend our common defense space. Fraternal and allied duty obliges us to do this.