After being booed, cheered and laughed at by state-owned factory workers on Monday amid the biggest show of discontent the country has ever seen, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is desperately holding on to power.
Thousands of Belarussians have taken to the streets every day since his contested victory in the August 9 elections, with growing calls for Lukashenko to leave after violent protests by protesters.
The embedded Lukashenko is now signaling for help for his last standing ally: Russia. But despite fears that Russia could support the Belarusian leader, perhaps even with military intervention, it appears that President Vladimir Putin is in no hurry to throw him a rescue.
“There is certainly no love lost between Putin and Lukashenko,” Emily Ferris, a Russian research fellow at the Royal United Services (RUSI) think tank in London, told NBC News.
Although Putin has not publicly commented on the ongoing internal unrest in Belarus, he spoke twice over the weekend with Lukashenko on the phone.
According to the Kremlin’s official transcripts, he has promised “assistance” under a 1994 security agreement, which mandates both countries to provide assistance – including military including necessary – if faced with an external threat.
Linas Linkevicius, Minister of Foreign Affairs of neighboring Lithuania, said Monday that if Russia responded with military force, it would reaffirm its reputation as a “lawless state”.
But experts say that moment is becoming far from reality.
“At present, there is no obvious need for Russia to take military action,” said Keir Giles, a senior consultant at Chatham House, a London think tank.
Giles said the security treaty allowed member states to help each other in more situations than just external aggression, although Lukashenko has maintained that opposition is being manipulated by foreign powers, raising fears about NATO’s presence on the country’s western borders this weekend.
Giles said the treaty also supports “threats to security, stability, territorial integrity and sovereignty” of members as a situation where action can be taken.
But that assistance does not have to be just military.
Giles asid Russia could take on a whole host of other initiatives before the situation got this far, such as positioning itself as a mediator for a transition of power already suggested by opposition leader and runner-up Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, who on Monday said she was ready to become national leader to enter into the dispute of election result.
There are also many other forms of ‘assistance’ that could be hailed by Moscow as something acceptable, Giles said, including strengthening Belarusian security forces with Russia’s own heavily militarized national guard.
“Russia will be ready, without a doubt,” he added. “But first and foremost, there is no threat to Moscow’s biggest concern, which is a new government in Minsk seeking to cut economic and security ties with Russia and move west.”
Tsikhanouskaya had previously expressed opposition to deeper integration with Moscow at the expense of her country’s sovereignty, but nevertheless said she would embrace good, friendly relations with all of her country’s neighbors, including Russia.
Providing any military assistance to Lukashenko would also be a very unpopular move internally for Putin, Ferris said with RUSI.
Belarus and Russia share deep economic, historical and cultural ties, but Putin’s relationship with Lukashenko froze after unsuccessful talks last year to deepen integration between the two countries, with the Belarusian president rejecting what he saw as an attack on the sovereignty of his country.
Those ties were further tightened just before the election after Belarus arrested a group of suspected Russian monsters, who accused Belarusian authorities of being in the country to destabilize it. Russia refuses to hire the rental team.
Ferris acknowledged that unlike in Ukraine, where Russia supported anti-government separatists in eastern Ukraine during the 2014 political unrest, resulting in a military conflict that has yet to be resolved, there are fewer divisions along the way. ethnic and linguistic rules in Belarus. difficult to draw parallels.
Moreover, Russia has for years tried to reassure itself of responsibility for the situation in eastern Ukraine without losing control and saving face, she said, making Putin likely very reluctant to take this risk back on this path.
Instead, Ferris said the situation in Armenia in 2018 could serve as a possible option – although a pro-Moscow government was no longer in power, she said, Russia decided to forge ties with the new leader to ensure Armenia remained relatively on site.
“Even if Moscow would eventually prefer Lukashenko to remain in power, another perhaps more ‘pro-Western’ leader would come to power, Russia could establish a decent relationship with that commitment, even if it is not ideal. , ‘she added.
What Lukashenko’s appeal to Putin really does show is that he might not be able to deal with the protests without Putin’s help, said Yauheni Preiherman, director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations, a political think tank.
“This very political crisis, regardless of who is going to end it, has already undermined the Belarusian sovereignty to an extent never seen before,” Preiherman said. “And that’s Russia’s ideal scenario, no matter what happens then.”
