It’s getting colder and icy winds are again blowing from the north, particularly Moscow.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Minsk this week. For those who might naively have been hoping for signals that the Kremlin is losing patience with the cruel methods and political buffoonery of dictator Aleksander Lukashenko and is embarrassed by the extent of the domestic and external opposition he has generated, this was yet another sobering disappointment.
Ukraine, which recently announced it would join the European Union sanctions against Belarus, was singled out for invective. In the presence of Lavrov, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei accused Kyiv of “unfriendly behavior” amounting to “an attempt to blatantly interfere in Belarus’s domestic affairs,” and which Minsk views as “a mockery of common sense.”
Ukraine, he insinuated, is longer pursuing a sovereign foreign policy, but has become dependent of the nefarious West. Makei threatened Ukraine with retaliation. “We will not leave unanswered any action of Ukraine directed against the Belarusian state.”
The shrill hardline tone sounded by both the Russian and Belarusian interlocutors seemed like a throwback to the days of hyped-up Cold War rhetoric.
Lavrov made it clear that not only is Vladimir Putin’s administration not about to abandon its obstreperous ally, but also that it is not prepared to seek an arrangement with the Belarusian democratic opposition, nor daunted by the prospects of increased Western sanctions and isolation. In other words, the Kremlin is not prepared to opt for dialogue in favor of confrontation.
The Russian foreign minister, according the official BELTA news agency rallied on about “gross interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states on the part of the USA and some European countries.”
“We are still witnessing the use of dirty methods of the so-called color revolutions, including manipulation of public opinion, establishment and support of anti-governmental forces, and facilitation of their radicalization. These methods are applied in relation to the Republic of Belarus,” Lavrov claimed.
He made no mention of the reasons for the mass nationwide peaceful protests that have gripped Belarus for well over 100 days and the terror that has been unleashed by the Lukashenko junta in response to the calls for the dictator to go.
“Russia cannot remain indifferent. Belarus is our ally, our strategic partner and Belarusians are our brotherly nation. Of course, we would like the situation here to calm down and stabilize,” he added, but cautioned that this should be brought about “by the constitutional reform initiated by the country’s authorities as an important stage in the improvement and transformation of the political, economic, and legal system.”
In other words. Moscow seems set on continuing to play a waiting game. It has relinquished the opportunity to step in as a would-be mediator between the Belarusian democratic opposition and the Lukashenko regime and thereby earn potential kudos. Lavrov angrily dismissed rumors that Moscow had had confidential contacts with the opposition as a “blatant lie.”
Instead, the Kremlin has decided, publicly at least, to encourage a rejected leader considered illegitimate and a usurper by so many to push through “constitutional” changes of dubious future validity and see how the situation emerges.
Yet the longer the Kremlin keeps backing Lukashenko , and condoning through its silence his brutal methods and suppression not only of democratic activity but also national symbols, the more likely it is that the goodwill of many Belarusians towards Russia will also be lost.
Many in the Belarusian opposition already suspect that Russia is waiting for the Belarusian economy to collapse and then to step in for the easy pickings. They also fear that Moscow is secretly preparing pro-Russian forces that will be mobilized at the right moment to facilitate some form of absorption of Belarus into a joint Russian-Belarusian quasi union.
Both Moscow and Minsk have long since – certainly from the time of the EuroMaidan and Revolution of Dignity which in early 2014 ousted pro-Russian kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovych – had to face up to the fact that Ukraine has been lost for Putin’s Moscow-centered Eurasian project and remains an irritating beacon of pro-European democracy, however flawed, on their borders.
For some time, however, Lukashenko, considering himself craftier than everyone else, thought he could somehow balance between Russia and the economic and energy support from it on which he was dependent, and for self-serving purposes also flirt with the West.
Right up to the presidential election on Aug. 9 which he rigged and thereby triggered the Belarusian democratic revolution, he considered it expedient to maintain a supposedly friendly attitude towards Western-oriented Ukraine, even though it is at war with Russia.
Before the quasi-election he even pretended to be protecting Belarus’ sovereignty from Russian expansionist schemes. This summer he sought to convince Kyiv that he was prepared to hand-over Russian Wagner “private army” fighters suspected of committing war crimes in the Donbas and who had been detained in Minsk.
All this changed when confronted with a veritable national democratic revolution at home, in order to save his skin, he was left with no option but to grovel before Moscow and turn up the anti-Western rhetoric.
With Kyiv agreeing this month to join the EU’s sanctions against the Lukashenko junta, the anger of both the Lukashenko and Putin regimes has mounted.
What seems to irk then, in particular, is not simply the Volodymyr Zelensky administration’s reluctance to accept Lukashenko as a legitimate president, but the condemnation by it, the Ukrainian parliament and country’s civil society of the barbaric methods he is using against the Belarusian people.
Revealing this irritation, Makei declared today “Ukraine is no reference standard for us as far as human rights are concerned. We believe the country cannot act as a mentor or a teacher for Belarus in this situation.”
The Belarusian foreign minister even went as far as to suggest somewhat cryptically that official Kyiv had joined in the sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime because its own reputation has come under fire.
According to BELTA, “Makey noted that Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevicius had stated the other day that Europe was already tired of Ukraine. Therefore, Ukraine is trying to make itself look like a reference standard of democracy and the observation of human rights, the official pointed out.”
For his part, Lavrov accused Western states of not wanting to respect international rules, and the Council of Europe of trying to impose its principles even on those countries that are not its member states.
“I consider it absolutely inadmissible. We will make sure that the Council of Europe, under Germany’s presidency, does not forget about the topics that the West is trying to sweep under the rug in every possible way,” he warned.
And what are these? The hackneyed litany reiterated by Moscow in such situations. According to Lavrov, “These are the infringement of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of the Baltic states, reforms in education in Ukraine, harassment of the Russian media and glorification of the Nazism.”
One final noteworthy detail. In his desperate attempts to ingratiate himself with Putin, Lukashenko told Lavrov that there is no need to re-set Russian-Belarusian relations, but to intensify them.
And there was an even more pathetic pitch to the Kremlin’s strongman. Putin has made no secret of his regret that the Soviet Union was allowed to collapse. Lukashenko stressed that this had occurred not because the Belarusian people wanted it.
So now we have a beleaguered tyrant not only rejecting the will of his people in the present but also not hesitating to revise history and suggest that even in 1991 the Belarusian would have preferred to have been under the control of Moscow.
There’s a problem with Lukashenko’s sycophantic attempt to rewrite history. It was precisely in Belarus, at the Belovezhkaya Pushcha nature reserve that on Dec. 8, 1991 the first leader of independent Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich hosted a meeting at which the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Leonid Kravchuk, jointly agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union.
The flag of post-Soviet independent Belarus was the national white-red-white one which the Soviet rulers had banned, and which on coming to power in 1994 Lukashenko lost little time replacing with a Soviet-era version. No further comment needed, I think.
