Union ghost over Europe

Supreme State Council meeting in Minsk confirmed the prevailing doubt of who is really running whom.

Despite the impressive Russian delegation headed by Putin, who appeared in Minsk immediately after the Defender of the Fatherland Day, it is still difficult to assess the real impact of this event.

Most of the Belarusian mass media outlets somehow tried covering the long-awaited meeting of the Supreme State Council of the "Union State" -- the 20-year-old ghost, which from time to time is brought to the surface by the media. This Belarus-Russia integration project with the same name and without the proper features is perceived in the world of politics as a ghost. However, it does have a feature -- the budget. It was approved, or rather, retained from the last year, at the Minsk summit, which looked more like a ritual reminder of the bilateral "union."

However, the complete silence of the Kremlin propaganda giants on this issue in their final TV programs, as well as of the Duma and other Russian politicians, does not mean a complete lack of interest in the last meeting from the Lukashenka'a residence. It seems that such was the desire of the Kremlin, while in Minsk it was all decided in a tete-a-tete meeting between Lukashenka and Putin, whom everyone waited for in the SSC of the Union State.

For some reason, everyone paid attention to Federation Council Speaker Madame Matvienko who was sitting there in a fur coat, but no one noticed the absence of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. However, his Belarusian counterpart was there which looked strange, especially after Lukashenka said that special attention was paid to the international and regional security. Among other things, they discussed a plan for the use of regional troops of Belarus and Russia.

We can also recall that it was General Shoigu last autumn who, perhaps for the first time, publicly talked about the creation of "armed defense mechanism of the "Union State" of a higher level".

- We approved the plan of joint actions for 2016-2018, aimed at the creation of the military unit of the "Union State", establishment of a reliable mechanism for its armed defense, said Shoigu, summing up the work of the joint board of the Defense Ministries of the two states.

At the same time, according to him, the parties discussed the joint protection of the external borders, combat duty in the framework of joint regional air defense system on the territory of Belarus, as well as further improvement of the joint system of electronic warfare.

The military exercises of Russia and Belarus called "Union Shield-2015" held in September showed that the capacity of the national army to protect the "Union State" increased in the last year, said Sergei Shoigu.

- In the conditions of increased NATO activities near the Russian border, we had a task -- to raise the combat readiness and willingness of the military bodies of the Russian and Belarusian troops for joint action in fighting back the aggressive action against the "Union State", to improve the field training of troops for on-purpose tasks, reminded Shoigu.

However, only the "ghost" of the Defense Minister was present on the approval of the Defense Plan of the "state". Did the minister stay "on duty" in Moscow or was he busy somewhere else with more important things is unknown. His Belarusian counterpart, who recently became the official Minsk spokesman, suddenly refused to give any comments after the meeting at the Presidential Palace.

Nevertheless, many observers had the feeling that in spite of the physical absence of Shoigu, the military component has prevailed more and more over the economic one in this "state", whose ghost nature does not exclude its manifestation in the foreign policy.

For example, some members of Putin's delegation, staying in Minsk for a couple of hours, advised their interlocutors on the sidelines of the Lukashenka's palace to expect in the near future the news from some European capitals. At the same time, they explained that the first official visit of "the distinguished guest from Minsk" to Europe after the lifting of sanctions will be the evidence of the implementation of the "Union State" foreign policy. At the same time, the Union's foreign policy will take into account, as they say in Moscow, the current confusion and vacillation in the European Union, which is causing optimism among allied strategists trying to find it "Achilles' heels".

As for its defense policy, the degree of tension with neighboring united Europe has only been increasing. Often one can hear the opinion that the Syrian war and the war in Ukraine are not the last hot spots supervized by Putin.

As is known, the regional group of forces, whose heart is the Belarusian army, is aimed to withstand the growing NATO activity on the borders of the "Union State". Obviously, the parties could be discussing tete-a tete and in other formats both the upcoming military exercises "Anaconda" in Poland in June and the Warsaw NATO summit in July this year, to which there are plans to invite Ukraine.

According to official information, the "Anaconda" drills will be attended by 25, 000 troops from 21 countries -- Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK and USA.

The United States will be represented by the units stationed both in Europe and the US, so there is planned an impressive demonstration of Western solidarity in response to Putin's foreign policy. All the warnings and even the threat of Premier Medvedev at the Munich Security Conference have had the opposite effect. The full understanding of the future of security in Europe should take place at the Warsaw NATO Summit. It is still not clear to what extent and how it is felt in the so-called "Union State".

At the same time, some military experts note, there is simply no military cooperation between Belarus and the neighboring Poland. Apparently, the union ghost is intended to also fill this niche in its defense.

The founding documents state that in the event of an external threat, the Belarus-Russia group is to be commanded by the Chairman of the Supreme State Council of the "Union State". However, the last meeting in Minsk only confirmed the prevailing doubts over who runs whom. Such relations do not allow for any neutral position.

Roman Yakovlevsky, exclusively for charter97.org