Portrait of Aleksandr Lukashenko from Mr. Putin's Office.
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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Belarus wants out - Foreign Affairs |
| 2014-03-23 |
| Russia’s partners are understandably spooked. Early in the Ukraine crisis, when pro-Western protesters were camping out in Kiev, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’ president, seemed happy to see Russia encourage the Ukrainian regime to crack down. Like Putin, he had no desire to see Ukraine’s fellow Slavs in Russia or Belarus copying the slogans and tactics of the Ukrainian protestors. (Lukashenko is still scarred by the demonstrations that followed the controversial 2010 elections, in which he won a fourth term in office.) But Russia’s military intervention in Crimea was a very different matter. Lukashenko pointedly refused to send observers to Crimea’s March 15 referendum. He has also defied Moscow by saying that he will work with the new pro-Western government in Kiev (which Putin has described as “illegitimate”). There are good reasons for Belarus to feel threatened. It does not have any single enclave with a majority ethnic-Russian population like Crimea, although approximately eight percent of the population in eastern Belarus is ethnically Russian. But Russia is the dominant language across all of Belarus. According to Putin’s reasoning for seizing Crimea, even Belarus could one day be a target of Russian pressure. (It’s similarly plausible, if not even more likely, that Russia would stage an intervention in Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking north.) Even if it is unlikely that Russia would invade Belarus anytime soon, Lukashenko does have reason to worry about the consequences of joining Putin’s Eurasian Union. For one, Lukashenko may already sense that the Eurasian Union won’t be the economic boon for Belarus that he had once imagined. Although he may have hoped that it would provide an open market for cheap Belarusian goods, its precursor, the Customs Union, has so far underscored that Belarusian goods have difficulties competing in a free market, even with goods produced in Russia or Kazakhstan. Further, even as Russia talks of creating a mutually beneficial partnership, it has been trying to weaken the states around itself. Ukraine is not the only such example. Georgia and especially Moldova have come under pressure as they try to tie up their EU Agreements in 2014. The last thing that Lukashenko wants is to become another weak leader challenged by domestic revolt, often fomented by Russia, who then becomes dependent on Russia to survive -- as Yanukovych would have become if he had not overreacted to the protests in Kiev and been forced to flee, or as Serzh Sargsyan has already become in Armenia. Even worse, Lukashenko knows he could end up as a tin-pot dictator of a mini-state, like Yevgeny Shevchuk, the president of Transnistria, or Sergei Aksyonov, the new prime minister of Crimea. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 So, after Vladimir the First patted him on the back, somebody pointed out he had a target there. Portrait of Aleksandr Lukashenko from Mr. Putin's Office. |
| Posted by: One Eyed Fluting5523 2014-03-23 10:33 |
| #2 So, after Vladimir the First patted him on the back, somebody pointed out he had a target there. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-03-23 09:50 |
| #1 He's already a tinpot dictator. I'm sure most people in Belarus would prefer Putin over him. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2014-03-23 02:24 |