Belarus: Sang Sochi ‘invites’, Lukashenko received $ 1.5 billion from Russia

The meeting on September 14, 2020 between Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi took place at the request of the Belarusian side.

That move alone shows that the policy of “independence from Russia” that Lukashenko has long pursued to secure his own power has had to change.

The reason is that the pressure to protest at home directly threatens their power, according to Geopolitical Futures.

Many commentators believe that Lukashenko is currently in serious trouble and any incorrect political miscalculation could lead to the possibility of his loss of power.

On September 13, thousands of people continued to take to the streets of Minsk to ask for re-election.

On the contrary, at the moment, on Putin’s part, any way to intervene in Belarus could provoke a bad reaction from Europe and Belarusian society.

However, the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders from Belarus faced many protests, marking Putin’s preeminent position.

On the one hand, Putin said that Russia wants “Belarusians to find a fluid solution to this situation for themselves through dialogue.”

This is an indication that Moscow still does not want to completely eliminate the role of the opposition and that its leaders are “refugees” in Moscow.

On the other hand, he immediately pledged $ 1.5 billion in loans to help the Lukashenko regime financially.

Economically, if the protests in Minsk only affected the mindset of government officials, strikes in other regions would and will have negative economic impacts.

The social security scheme was not generous, but was rather “subsidized” from all social classes in Belarus until before the translation of the Covid-19 was the basis of the support it had, according to regional newspapers. .

But now, the World Bank predicts that the 2020 Belarus economy will decline by at least 2% due to Covid-19, due to political tensions and due to the loss of export markets.

Some other forecasts put the number darker: 3.4%.

The Lukashenko administration needs immediate money to cover, including to maintain security and military operations to show that they are still strong.

In that regard, Putin also promised to help Belarus.

Russian police, he said, “are ready to intervene if the protest gets out of control.”

But the Russian side remains wary of Lukashenko’s suggestion that all military exercises in Belarus from now on will always invite Russian troops.

Neither party signed any documents in Sochi and, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Belarus’s debt to Russia has been discussed.

This is a sign that Russia does not want to accept all the provocative problems of Belarus, but according to some assessments of Russia, it is caused by Mr. Lukashenko himself.

On 08/22, Russian political analyst Professor Vladimir Kolotov from St. University. St. Petersburg said the same for BBC News Vietnamese.

According to him, “the current political developments in Belarus are due to the self-development of the Lukashenko government, self-destruction, self-corruption and the driving of the situation to the current crisis.

Lukashenko tried to ‘take some seats’ at the same time and at the same time threatened Russia that the West could topple Belarus if Russia did not support and at the same time threatened the West that if the West did not support it, Russia would topple.

“It was at the same time of such contradiction and ‘spinning in the wind’ frequently and ultimately to mistrust nationals and foreigners.”

In the short term, Russia does not want to make a specific commitment to help the Belarusian government to “dissolve the protests”, but only to continue with the pre-existing military maneuver agreements.

On September 15, 2020, Russia withdrew its security units created in late August from the border with Belarus.

The Moscow Times website said this was told by Putin to Lukashenko in Sochi a day ago.

At the same time, Russian troops went to Belarus for the exercise of the ‘Slavic Brotherhood’ near Brest, on the border with Poland, the NATO member states and the EU.

These annual drills are supposed to deal with regular NATO exercises in the region, not to intimidate protesters.

However, European newspapers believe that Lukashenko has repeatedly launched military exercises to demonstrate the strength of the regime.

In August alone, units of the Belarusian coalition were training near Grodno, not far from the borders of Lithuania and Poland.

At that time, Mr. Lukashenko went to the military training camp and condemned Poland and NATO for “conspiring to invade.”