Ukraine’s SBU claimed in a Telegram post on Friday that Russian special forces infiltrated Belarus under the cover of being exiled Wagner mercenaries and are plotting to carry out a false flag attack against the Mozyr oil refinery. According to them, this is being done in order to manipulate Belarus into joining their country’s special operation. There’s no reason to believe the Ukrainian secret police, but reading between the lines of their latest conspiracy theory is an interesting thought exercise.
Whether they intended to or not, the SBU is suggesting that Belarus really isn’t the “Russian puppet state” that Kiev and its Western patrons have hitherto claimed otherwise the Kremlin wouldn’t have to resort to a risky false flag attack for manipulating Minsk into reopening the northern front. President Putin would simply snap his fingers and order his Union State counterpart to do whatever is demanded of him if that was truly the case.
The second way in which the Ukrainian secret police inadvertently undercut another key Western infowar narrative in this conflict is through their claim that Russian special forces infiltrated Belarus under the cover of being exiled Wagner mercenaries. This allegation reaffirms Belarus’ aforesaid independence vis-a-vis Russia if the latter would supposedly have to sneak some of its best-trained troops there while also suggesting that they’re secretly allied with Wagner too.
Building upon the third implied dimension of the SBU’s Telegram post, this also goes against another pillar of the West’s anti-Russian propaganda campaign by undermining speculation that President Putin’s authority has collapsed since Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup in late June. If there was any truth to that, then the mercenaries would have blown the whistle on Russian special forces allegedly attempting to infiltrate Belarus under the cover of being some of their fellow fighters.
Observers should remember that the Ukrainian secret police’s latest conspiracy theory has no credible basis, but it’s still interesting that they were so desperate to get their targeted international audience to believe their lie that they didn’t mind discrediting three of their Western patrons’ top infowar narratives. This realization leads to the fourth point, which is that the SBU is probably plotting an attack against that Belarusian oil refinery and wants to precondition the public into blaming Russia once that happens.
Their motivations are likely to inflict major economic and ecological damage in that neighboring nation together with sowing the seeds of distrust between the Union State’s two members. This explains why they’re alleging in advance that Russia would be responsible, with the added detail claiming that it would do so under the cover of being Wagner mercenaries intended to pressure Minsk into kicking them out of the country. None of these goals will succeed, however, which segues into the final point.
It can’t be ruled out that the failure of the Ukrainian secret police’s possibly impending false flag attack against Belarus, in the event that it’s actually attempted and not called off after how obvious its plans became upon reading between the lines of their Telegram post, could dramatically backfire against Kiev. President Lukashenko might request his Wagner guests to retaliate tit-for-tat with their own cross-border sabotage operation or respond in some other way that still threatens to reopen the northern front.
The SBU is scared of this scenario, but it’s also under pressure from some shadowy source to still seriously consider carrying out this false flag attack despite the increasingly high risk of blowback, thus explaining why it’s suspiciously trying to precondition the public to blame Russia instead of staying silent. The worst-case scenario is that Wagner’s return to the conflict zone from Belarus prompts Poland to launch its reportedly planned conventional military intervention there irrespective of Kiev’s approval.
In that event, NATO-Russian tensions could escalate to the point of sparking World War III by miscalculation, but this might also counterintuitively provide an opportunity to de-escalate if creative diplomacy prevails by de facto partitioning Ukraine into “spheres of influence” instead. Here’s how that could happen. First, Poland’s existing efforts to slyly take control of Western Ukraine could be formalized by extending NATO’s nuclear umbrella over those regions through the presence of its troops there.
Second, Wagner and any Belarusian troops that participate in cross-border retaliatory strikes alongside them might either pull back to the Union State as a “goodwill gesture” after setting into motion the abovementioned scenario or hold whatever ground they gain to draw a new “line in the sand”. It’s unclear what they’ll do, just like nobody can know for sure how far eastward Poland would go, but the point is that the NATO-Russian Line of Contact (LOC) would likely define Ukraine’s new informal partition.
And third, there’s also of course the chance that a pseudo-“independent” portion remains in play for dividing NATO/Poland and Russia and thus managing the LOC after the inevitable ceasefire a lot more safely than if those two abutted one another without a buffer between them. Nevertheless, nothing in this worst-case scenario forecast can be taken for granted since the sequence of events is dependent on whether or not the SBU goes through with its false flag attack, which isn’t guaranteed.
The Ukrainian secret police might unilaterally refuse to participate in an operation that could ultimately lead to their country’s further de facto partitioning or be ordered to stand back if a comparatively more responsible policymaking faction finds out about this and has the power to call it off. If Kiev’s false flag plot for its special forces to attack Belarus’ Mozyr oil refinery while disguised as Wagner is allowed to proceed, however, then it could dramatically backfire by making matters worse than ever for Ukraine.
