Plenary session intervention on Belarus
You still have a choice, Mr. Putin, but do it right!
You can of course extract an agreement from a desperate Lukashenko on a union and thus integrate Belarus into Russia, but then you will only lose this country as you lost Ukraine by annexing Crimea and carrying the war into the Donbass.
Don’t do this, Mr. President, don’t do it because the Belarusians don’t want to break with your country and are reaching out to you; because NATO does not want to expand on the back of this crisis; because all the countries of the European Union want a compromise in Minsk and because you would rise and raise Russia by becoming a peacemaker in Belarus.
With this gesture, Mr. Putin, you would lay the foundations for cooperation between the European Union and the Russian Federation and change the course of too long a history of mistrust and conflict.
There is still time, Mr. Putin, but make the right choice quickly!
