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Belarusian President Alexander "Aviation authorities will give the CEO of Macro Adisory, a bne IntelliNews
columnist and veteran Russia-watcher who has been head of research at most of Russia’s leading investment banks over the last 30 years.
“Expletives were used,” says Weafer, who lives in Moscow and maintains contacts within the Kremlin circles.
“I think this has significantly shortened Lukashenko’s time in office,” said Weafer, adding that he doubts Lukashenko will survive another two years, as he has become a liability.
As bne IntelliNews has been reporting, the Kremlin is engaged in a delicate diplomatic dance to create a conducive atmosphere ahead of a one-on-one summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden on July 16 in Geneva – the best opportunity in years to start to walk back
Lukashenko has boxed Russian
President Vladimir Putin into showing the pariah president support in the face of harsh sanctions in the wake of the Ryanair flight affair.
The two presidents put on a show of bonhomie on Putin’s yacht in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on May 28 and the Kremlin announced it would release a second $500mn tranche of a $1bn loan announced earlier this year, although no new money was promised for the beleaguered Belarusian economy. Minsk has already effectively been cut off
from the international capital markets. It has $18.3bn of external public debt that needs to be refinanced, but is now entirely dependent on Russia’s capital markets as the only source of financing.
The meeting was jovial and Putin was unusually jolly, giving Lukashenko
a bro-hug as he stepped on to the president’s yacht. However, the whole meeting smacked of political theatre as the Kremlin has little choice other than to back Lukashenko as it plays for time to find an acceptable end to the worst political crisis the country has faced in 26 years.
It is noteworthy that Putin offered Lukashenko no new aid whatsoever. “Putin’s conversation with Lukashenko lasted over five hours and, in keeping with tradition, the details were
kept secret. But there is little doubt Lukashenko asked Putin for economic support when the EU imposes new sanctions,” the Russian language news service The Bell said in a comment.
Even the bans on entering Russian airspace if they avoided Belarusian airspace were temporary and blamed on bureaucracy. A French plane was refused entry on these grounds, but by the end of the week an Austrian plane had been allowed to land despite also avoiding flying over Belarus. The ban seems to have been a gesture in support of Belarus, but Moscow understands
an outright ban would drag it into the same conflict as Minsk with Brussels, and is not prepared to go there for Lukashenko’s sake.
necessary explanations, but these are technical reasons," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The Belarus strongman arrived in Sochi with a briefcase and said he wanted to show Putin "some documents" related to the Ryanair incident that he hinted would explain everything.
The EU was incensed when Lukashenko personally ordered a MiG fighter jet
that forced a commercial Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk while it was crossing Belarusian airspace and only minutes before it would have crossed into Lithuanian airspace.
The plan was carrying over 120 passengers, most of them EU citizens, and the former editor-in-chief of
“Brussels promises to follow up with sanctions on some of Belarus’s biggest exports to the EU, including potash, which will cause a great deal
of pain for the Belarusian budget”
the Nexta Telegram channel Roman Protasevich was arrested on arrival.
The EU immediately followed up with a recommendation that EU flights avoid Belarusian airspace and several countries banned the state-owned carrier Belavia from crossing EU airspace or landing. A flight from Minsk to Barcelona, which continued to permit Belavia to operate, was turned back at the Belarusian border after France refused permission for the carrier to cross French airspace.
Brussels promises to follow up with sanctions on some of Belarus’s biggest exports to the EU, including potash, which will cause a great deal of pain for the Belarusian budget, which is already in deep deficit following the start of mass protests following last year's disputed presidential elections on August 9.
Privately the Kremlin is also extremely angry, according to Chris Weafer, the
the tensions that have built up between Russia and the West. Both presidents have said they need to deal with huge problems on their domestic agendas and the international sparring is a distraction they would like to dispense with. In addition, both leaders have said clearly they want to revive some of the Cold War arms control treaties and need to co-operate on international issues such as climate change, but also conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iran and other hotspots.
Lukashenko’s antics threaten to put a spanner in the works of that effort, for the sake of his downing a commercial carrier in order to slake his thirst for revenge on a 26-year-old blogger.
The reaction by Brussels was entirely predictable, as it is very reminiscent of the downing of the MH17 Malaysian commercial jet by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine in July 2014.
However, the more serious consequence
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