WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – The State Department has issued a new warning to American citizens in Belarus, where thousands of Russian soldiers have gathered for dangerous military drills, encouraging them to leave “immediately.”
The grim new warning comes as US authorities anticipate a possible Russian strike on neighboring Ukraine in the coming days, causing the State Department to close its embassy in Kyiv and shift its staff to Lviv in western Ukraine.
Belarus and Russia began military drills on Thursday, deploying tens of thousands of Russian troops, as well as modern weaponry and equipment, to the landlocked nation that shares borders with both Russia and Ukraine. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s strongman leader, has grown closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a result of clamping down on political opponents, fomenting a migrant problem in Europe, and facing heavy Western sanctions, according to ABC NEWS.
Because of the internal crackdown and the potential of “arbitrary enforcement of laws” and incarceration, as well as COVID-19, the State Department had already advised American citizens to “do not travel to Belarus.”
However, a fresh alert issued Monday evening included a warning about Russia’s extraordinary and worrying military expansion along Belarus’ border with Ukraine and advised US nationals in Belarus to leave immediately by private or commercial means.
The American embassy in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, had earlier ordered the exit of members of the family on January 31, with a very limited team of U.S. diplomats still in the country.
The State Department is also advising Americans to “depart immediately” from Transnistria, which is actually part of Moldova, a landlocked nation on Ukraine’s southwestern border.
The urgent warning is limited to Transnistria, an unrecognized breakaway area where Russia has stationed soldiers as “peacekeepers” against Moldova’s will, similar to Russian forces stationed in two disputed parts of Georgia, the fairly small former Soviet republic.
During the present conflict, US officials, notably Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have regularly highlighted Transnistria, along with Georgia and Ukraine, as another example of Russia’s aggressiveness in the area in recent years.
Last month, Ukrainian authorities went even further. Its defense intelligence agency claimed it had proof that Russia was plotting a false flag provocation upon its own soldiers in Transnistria in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine, a charge disputed by the Russian government.
With the memories of Afghanistan looming over them, the Biden administration has stated that the US military would not be used to assist in the evacuation of American civilians if conflict breaks out in the region. That historic, chaotic operation eventually evacuated 124,000 people, but the State Department has stated that it did not set a precedent.
Instead, the US has issued increasingly urgent warnings to individual Americans in Ukraine, Belarus, and now Transnistria, urging them to evacuate while commercial flights and land border crossings are still accessible.
