President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia gave an ominous warning on Thursday to
protesters in Belarus not to push too hard to topple their country’s embattled president, saying that Russia had formed a special reserve force of security officers to restore order in the event of chaos in its western neighbor.
Mr. Putin, speaking in an interview with Russian state television, said he had ordered the creation of a “certain reserve of law enforcement officers” at the request of Belarus’s authoritarian leader,
Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. He said the force had not been deployed yet, because “we also agreed that it will not be used unless the situation gets out of control.”
Mr. Putin’s remarks sent the strongest warning yet that Russia could use force to halt more than two weeks of protests in Belarus, which he described as “perhaps the closest country to us.” While saying that Belarusians themselves must decide their future after a
disputed presidential election on Aug. 9, he added, “We are certainly not indifferent to what is happening there.”
Mr. Putin, who works hard to cultivate an aura of invincibility, can hardly afford to be.
The crisis in Belarus has confronted the Russian leader with a perilous dilemma: After weeks of
protests in the Russian Far East and a wave of indignation over the
poisoning of his most prominent opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny, Mr. Putin is loath to see the demise of a fellow authoritarian who himself seemed invincible until this month. It might give Russians ideas.
