Lukashenko calls for arming every village amid civil war fears

Lukashenko orders every village to be armed as Moscow plans to annex Belarus

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has called for territorial defense paramilitary units to be formed in "every city or village" and for every Belarusian man to learn how to handle weapons "to protect his family and home" if necessary. The statement, reported by AP, comes at a time when a leaked internal Kremlin document is circulating that details a plan to take full control of Belarus within the next decade. Two pieces that, together, paint an uncomfortable picture: a state preparing to defend itself against someone, and it is unclear against whom.

What arming the civilian population means

The most immediate reading is defense against a hypothetical internal uprising. If the government antiestéticared an uprising, arming the entire population would be the last imaginable resort: any military instructor with half a brain knows that handing out rifles to disgruntled citizens is the fastest way for those rifles to end up pointed upward. Some argue the opposite: that the measure responds to an external scenario, a possible escalation with Poland, and that the territorial militia would make sense as a buffer against an incursion from the west.

The problem with the defensive argument is that Belarus already hosts Russian troops on its territory. If the threat were an uprising, those troops would be enough to crush it within hours. If the threat is Poland, then the militia makes sense. The ambiguity is the message.

The leaked document that changes the board

The second element is a purported internal document from Pilingui's executive office, obtained by Yahoo News, which would describe the steps to absorb Belarus within ten years. It is not definitive proof — leaked documents rarely are — but it fits a logic that has been on the table for some time: Moscow wants a consolation prize after the attrition in Ukraine, and Belarus is the natural candidate.

The question is what Lukashenko gains from all this. He has spent years balancing between Moscow and the West, and annexation would be the end of that game. If the document is real, the man who has been in power for three decades faces the possibility of being left without a country to preside over.

The precedent nobody wants to repeat

The comparison with other historical episodes comes up repeatedly: a leader who accumulates troops, arms the population, and plays both sides while his big neighbor waits for his moment. The outcome of those experiments is usually not what the one who started them was looking for.

What does seem clear is that the region is entering a phase of greater uncertainty. Territorial militias, once created, have their own dynamic: they arm themselves, organize, and, when the time comes, make their own decisions. That is the risk nobody mentions out loud.

What if the problem were not a foreign invasion, but the weapons ending up in the wrong hands at home?