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32 I Cover story bne June 2021
Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 28 as Belarus is facing down a wave of harsh new sanctions by the EU, which is incensed by the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk.
as a figurehead and allowing him a dignified retirement in several years time is also a likely possibility.
Lukashenko has been dragging his heels on the change. He promised to present a draft at the All –Belarusian People’s Assembly in February, but failed to produce it and now says the draft will be presented at the end of this year and a referendum will be held next year.
In the meantime, as bne IntelliNews reported, the Kremlin has been working to set up pro-Russian parties that could enter Parliament and represent the Kremlin’s interests since the end
of last year.
Putin’s problem is that he cannot
simply carry out a coup and replace Lukashenko by fiat. As Russia’s own domestic politics show, the Kremlin needs to win a genuinely large number
of voters to support its candidates or it will face continued mass protests. Over the last three decades it has developed the “political technology” to delivery on this goal fairly effectively, but it takes time. In the meantime, Putin is forced to publically back Lukashenko, as he also cannot afford to undermine Lukashenko’s standing with the local elite and security forces, which is currently the only thing keeping him in office.
That leaves Putin in the embarrassing position of marrying himself to
an obvious tyrant that will only complicate the upcoming talks with Biden. However, it could also become common ground, as some Western commentators have begun to admit
that the West has no leverage over Lukashenko. The recent threats to sanction Belarus’ potash exports will certainly be painful, but they will not be more than an inconvenience. If the West wants to make progress on loosening Lukashenko’s grip the only effective way of doing that is with Russian help.
However, given the length of the shopping list on the table in Geneva at the Putin-Biden meeting, it is highly unlikely they will be able to get into such a specific and delicate discussion at their first meeting.
of Protasevich's arrest is that Lukashenko has made the point that even if Belarusians flee into exile, they are not safe from his security forces. Tikhanovskaya made the point in a tweet at the weekend: “No one is safe. Not even in the EU.”
Yet publicly Putin has been boxed into a very public display of support for Lukashenko.
At the end of the first month of protests last year Lukashenko came very close to being ousted, notably at a speech
he gave to the workers of the MZKT, which makes military trucks, when they heckled the embattled president at a rally on August 17, in what some are calling his “Ceausescu moment.” Clearly flustered by the open defiance of the blue collar workers, traditionally his core supporters, Lukashenko beat a hasty retreat and subsequently said he was open to a power sharing deal.
Until that point the Kremlin had remained on the sidelines in the dispute, saying little, but as it became clear
the situation was about to turn into
a “colour revolution” and Lukashenko would be forcibly ejected, the Kremlin stepped in and Putin offered to send military support to Minsk “if necessary.” With the open backing of Russia,
the security forces rallied behind
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Lukashenko assuring his position and the incumbent retook the initiative.
Since then Lukashenko has been cracking down on the opposition. Factory directors singled out activists, who have been sacked or jailed. All
the opposition press have been closed, including most recently TUT.by, which was the bastion of opposition reporting, and security forces are raiding and arresting online activists in their homes on a daily basis. Lukashenko
is now running a full-on repressive regime reminiscent of the worst of the Soviet-era regime.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin has put itself in a position where it cannot withdraw its support from Lukashenko or it runs the danger of his regime collapsing. The Kremlin is in the process of a managed transition where it remains in control
of the process and is working to install some sort of government that will be compliant to Russia’s interests.
The focus has been on changing the constitution, which Lukashenko himself has been proposing for several years as
a sop to the opposition. That process
has been accelerated and a new Kremlin- approved constitution is expected to significantly weaken the president’s powers. Lukashenko could also be removed outright, but leaving him