Russia keeps police on standby to aid Belarus

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he stands ready to send police reinforcements into neighboring Belarus if political protests get out of control.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has faced down weeks of protests against his reelection for a sixth term in the Aug 9 vote, which the opposition claimed was rigged.

Putin said Lukashenko has asked him to prepare a Russian law-enforcement contingent to deploy to Belarus if necessary.

"However, we also agreed that it won't be used unless the situation gets out of control," Putin said in an interview with the Russian state-owned Rossiya-1 channel.

"We have agreed not to use it until the situation starts spinning out of control and extremist elements acting under the cover of political slogans cross certain boundaries and engage in banditry and start burning cars, houses and banks or take over administrative buildings.

"However, Alexander Grigoryevich (Lukashenko) and I decided that there is no need for that yet, and I hope that there won't be one. This is why we are not using this backup unit."

In a jab at the West, Putin accused unidentified foreign forces of trying to gain political advantage from the turmoil in Belarus.

"They want to influence those processes and reach certain decisions, which they think conform with their political interests,"Putin said.

Putin also mentioned an incident that resulted in some Russians being arrested in Belarus. Just before the election, Minsk arrested 32 private Russian military contractors on charges of planning to stage riots. Belarusian authorities released them after the election.

Putin described the incident as a provocation by Ukrainian and United States spy agencies, charging that they lured the Russians to travel to Belarus by promising them jobs in a third country and made Belarusian authorities believe they had a mission to destabilize the country ahead of the vote.

The US and the European Union have criticized the election that extended Lukashenko's rule as neither free nor fair and encouraged Belarusian authorities to engage in a dialogue with the opposition.

The Belarusian leader, who has been in power since 1994, has dismissed the protesters as Western puppets and refused to engage in dialogue with the opposition.