I'm Arthur Snell. A major war is taking place on the European continent with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

We'll be releasing a series of special episodes to help you understand the background of this crisis as it unfolds.

This is Doomsday Watch.

In the first series of Doomsday Watch, we tried to answer the question of what Putin wants.

In that episode, we spoke to Hannah Lubakova, a democracy activist and reporter from Belarus.

Hannah joined us from exile in Lithuania to explain the Belarus perspective and how her country has been unwillingly dragged into this conflict.

As Putin's wingman, Alexander Lukashenko has allowed his country to be a staging point for the invasion.

Hannah, welcome.

Hello.

Hannah, your country has been dragged into this war.

So perhaps you could start by explaining to our listeners who might not be so familiar with the status of Belarus.

What is happening there in relation to this conflict at the moment?

As you know, Russia launched this unprovoked and Chinese attack on Ukraine, and it is a real tragedy.

Not only for Ukrainians, but also for us, the people of Belarus, because the regime of Lukashenko made our country an aggressor in this war.

He is a legitimate and illegal ruler, but he brought in Russian troops and made Belarus a full-fledged participant in this war in Russian invasion.

By providing infrastructure and the territory for their attack, he also threatened to send Belarusian troops to fight Ukrainians on the side of Russians.

We in Belarus believe that this is how it treason, and it betray all of the interests of the people.

Because the majority of Belarusians are against the war, they don't want to threaten our neighbor.

Nevertheless, the regime is doing what it's doing for the past, basically, more than a week.

So is it correct to say that there are troops from Belarus on the ground in Ukraine,

so they are still at the moment in a support role to the Russian invaders?

We don't have confirmation that Belarusian troops have been sent to Ukraine,

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