Bolton Claims US Should Oust Belarus' Lukashenko to 'Nice Villa on Riviera' - Report

Thousands of migrants, mostly from Middle Eastern countries, have congregated at the Poland-Belarus border amid cold weather in a bid to get into the EU. Brussels has accused the Belarusian leader of orchestrating the crisis, while he has denied the allegations, claiming that it is the military operations of the West that triggered the surge.

John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump, stated that the US should come up with a way to remove Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko from power in order to thwart Russia from reclaiming the neighboring former Soviet republic, CNBC reported Wednesday.

The Biden administration should look into finding the authoritarian leader "a nice villa on the Riviera," Bolton is quoted in the report as saying.

"I think we’ve all been making a mistake by focusing on Lukashenko’s repression of the opposition’s demonstrations [and] their desire for a free representative government in Belarus, not to say that there is anything that justifies what Lukashenko has done," Bolton reportedly said. "The danger is that as the opposition continues to mount its protest, for Lukashenko, if he can’t have an authoritarian government on his own in Belarus, Plan B is to call in the Russians to help. And once that happens, the Belarus people themselves may never have an opportunity to get a free government again."

Thus, Bolton figures, the US must prepare a strategy on "how to get Lukashenko out of power and find him a nice villa on the Riviera or something like that."

"[It is] something we ought to consider because if he invites Russia in, I don’t think they are leaving," he added.

The former adviser's remarks come as the European Union intensifies its efforts to impose sanctions on Belarus in response to an escalating migrant crisis along the EU's border with Poland.

In order to deter attempts by migrants to enter its territory, Poland has reinforced its border guards and deployed the military. Brussels has accused Minsk of engineering the border crisis in retribution for sanctions, while Belarus has denied the allegations.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has rejected claims that it is behind the immigration problem as "absurd," arguing that border controls had been improved and that state-owned airline Belavia was not transporting illegal migrants into the nation. Minsk has also said that it is the Western states' military ops in the Middle East and Africa that are to blame for the refugee influx.

Bolton, who served in Trump's White House for 17 months between 2018 and 2019 before departing on tumultuous grounds, has a long history of provocative statements, having advocated for increasing US pressure on such countries as Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. Trump once said that if he ever listened to what Bolton said, a third world war would be imminent.

On Monday, the Russian president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russia could help resolve the migrant crisis on Belarus' borders with the EU as a negotiating mediator. Putin earlier stated that Russia is ready to help in every possible way to resolve the situation with migrants that has developed on the EU-Belarus border.