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Lukashenko (66) comes into action. He had more than 120 people arrested during the solidarity demonstration for the arrested opposition activist Maria Kolesnikowa (38) on Tuesday night. Images and videos show how masked forces arrest people, sometimes brutally, separating the groups. The dictator systematically allows his adversaries to be spied on, hunted down and kidnapped.
“There, someone rings the bell again …”, writes the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexijewitsch (72) in a statement. She is the only one of the seven members of the presidium of the coordination council of the democratic movement who is at liberty and in Belarus; all others have been arrested or forced to leave.
Vladimir Putin (67) apparently holds the strings in his hand. “Advisers sent by the Russian security service advise the Belarusian leader to demobilize the protest movement through a combination of massive repression and targeted threats against opposition leaders,” write experts Michael Carpenter and Vlad Kobets in an article for Foreign Policy.
Putin learned from the Ukraine disaster
These included threats that their children would be taken away and sent to orphanages. Furthermore, Moscow is apparently working with Lukashenko to divide the protest movement “between East and West Belarusians, workers and intellectuals, Catholics and Orthodox Christians.” Russian TV presenters spread propaganda that foreign forces were behind the historic protests.
Putin’s goal for Belarus: a kind of “soft annexation”. He learned from the disaster in Ukraine. Instead of dispatching his soldiers and acting violently and harshly, he secures power through the back door. That means: economic integration, a common currency and finally political integration through a common foreign and defense policy. At the end? This is a state of union that “de facto would mean the admission of Belarus into Russia,” as Carpenter and Kobets write.
The State of the Union has already been signed
The dictator of Belarus, Lukashenko, has already signed a treaty with Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007), on the establishment of a common “State of the Union”. But the contract signed more than 20 years ago more or less disappeared in a drawer. Because Yeltsin’s successor at the top of Russia, Vladimir Putin, initially had only limited interest in working closely with the isolated Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, in turn, acknowledged that he would only be a junior partner.
But stagnation without influence is not on Putin’s mind. He focused on economic wear and tear, cut Belarusian oil subsidies, and restricted agricultural exports to Russia. The message: Minsk needs Moscow for economic reasons.
“Now, under the guise of the current political crisis, Moscow is sending planes full of ‘political technologists’ to Belarus, in addition to secret service employees, cyber operators, media advisers, propagandists and security advisers,” write experts Carpenter and Kobets. So strategists instead of soldiers. “His specialty is political warfare. Its immediate task is to lay the foundations for a smooth annexation. “
New elections, yes, but only on Moscow’s terms
While Lukashenko insults the demonstration participants, who have taken to the streets since the rigged presidential elections on August 9, as “rats,” his ally Putin publicly represses himself. Although he congratulated Lukashenko on the election, he described the vote, in which the dictator allegedly received 80.1 percent of the vote, as “not ideal.”
After a conversation between the Belarusian dictator and the Kremlin, Putin said: Lukashenko was “willing to consider the possibility of a constitutional reform, the adoption of a new constitution and the organization of new elections, both parliamentary and presidential, on the basis of of this new constitution “. throw “. Lukashenko, in turn, announced during the same period that he would be ready for talks, but not with the democratic movement.
The messages from Moscow and Minsk mean one thing above all: constitutional changes and new elections will come, albeit on Putin’s terms. Experts suspect that the constitutional amendments will pave the way for further economic integration with Russia. If the Lukashenko dictatorship is loosened with Putin’s support, there are calculations behind it.
The opposition faces a dilemma
An expanded role for parliament, for example, would supposedly empower the people, but in practice would allow the Kremlin-backed “puppet parties” to wield greater influence. This makes the Kremlin independent from a possibly more independent successor to Lukashenko.
It is similar with the promise of new elections: the concession to the protest movement is a Trojan horse. First, Moscow buys time to vet pro-Kremlin candidates for the post.
This is a dilemma for the democracy movement in Belarus, which has been weakened by arrests and threats. Actually, she is not interested in breaking with Moscow. “We are linked by trade and at the moment we cannot get away from Russia. That will always be our neighbor, and we have to have a good relationship, “Belarusian opposition member Svetlana Tichanowskaja (37) said on Wednesday at an economic forum in Karpacz, Lower Silesia.
Tichanovskaya said he would ask all countries, “including Russia”, to respect Belarus’ sovereignty. Putin couldn’t have had less in mind, regardless of whether Lukashenko remains in power or not.
One Country, Many Names – The former Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic has been officially known as the Republic of Belarus since 1991. The use of this name is intended to counter the misunderstanding that the country is only a part of Russia. However, this term is slowly gaining acceptance in the German-speaking world. However, the Swiss Foreign Ministry constantly writes “Belarus” and “Belarusian”, with an s. What if I want to know more? Then please keep reading here.
