MOSCOW—Russia has assembled a law-enforcement team to help shore up Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko if protests against him spiral out of control, President Vladimir Putin said, giving the first indications of how Moscow might intervene to help its longstanding ally. Mr. Putin said the special unit had been requested by Mr. Lukashenko, who for the past two weeks has been facing massive street protests after claiming an election win that his opponents and the West said was marred by widespread fraud. In an interview on state television, Mr. Putin noted the countries’ close historic and ethnic ties and said Russia was obliged to support Belarus under a collective defense treaty and other agreements to align the two neighbors politically. “Alexander Grigorievich [Lukashenko] has asked me to create a certain reserve of law-enforcement officials, and that was done,” Mr. Putin said Thursday. He didn’t elaborate on which branches of Russia’s sprawling security services, running from police to paramilitary forces, had been used to form the new detachment.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 27, 2020 15:33 UTC