The war between Russia and Belarus – what awaits Lukashenka – latest news / NV
Lukashenka apparently counted on his help, instigation and promotion of Vladimir Putin’s aggression to pay off.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka was plucked like chickens.
The Belarusian autocrat, like his Kremlin bosses, was confident in a quick and convincing Russian victory in Ukraine. Lukashenka apparently counted on his help, instigation and promotion of Vladimir Putin’s aggression to pay off.
By allowing Putin to use the Belarusian masses as a springboard for Russian troops and places from where Russian missiles were taken to Ukrainian cities, the Minsk dictator hoped that a grateful Kremlin counterpart would help him and certainly remain in power.
Lukashenka, of course, miscalculated. After a quick and triumphant campaign, the Russian blitzkrieg bogged down in the mire of war.
As Putin shifts his plans from capturing Kyiv to taking full control of the Donbass, the foothold that Lukashenka arrives at Putin’s airport to arrest the Ukrainian capital no longer seems so important. According to Ukrainian military intelligence, “all battalion tactical groups that have so far been concentrated in Belarus, near our northern borders, are now being redeployed to eastern Ukraine.”
Lukashenka will be considered binding on the Kremlin. “The Belarusian dictator understands this well, and therefore he tries to explain his need to the Russian leadership and Putin personally. Lukashenka understands that the resource for his presence is now in the internal and international security of the Kremlin,” political analyst Pavel Usov noted in his recent column for Deutsche Welle.
Sold his soul to Putin and became a stranger to his own people
Lukashenka seems to be doing his best to help find his usefulness. The Ministry of Defense of Belarus announced the approach of scientific air defense research to Russia from April 26 to 29. But even now, when trying to please Russia and appease her, Lukashenka is increasingly at odds with the Belarusian opinion.
According to a new poll of the independent Belarusian population by Andrei Vardomasotsialny, two groups of the country’s population oppose the consumption of Belarusian force for the Russian military force in Ukraine and 11% of the mass imports of Belarusian contingents to the mass of the country.
It is noteworthy that 50.4% of Belarusians do not approve of Russia’s actions in the war, and 42.7% approve. Almost half of Belarusians, 45.2%, sympathize with Ukraine. Public opinion in Belarus is divided on the question of who is to blame for the war: 24% of those polled blame Russia, 20% – Reports about what aviation is and 17% – Ukraine.
And this is where the puzzle for Lukashenka is solved. In order to please the bosses in the Kremlin and keep his political skin, Lukashenka is forced to go against the clear desire of his population.
Belarus, whose economy is collapsing and Russian subsidies are dwindling, is also being hurt by the western territories. According to the Ministry of Economy of Belarus, the economy recorded zero growth in the first quarter of 2022. According to some estimates, this year it may reach 6.5%.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a revolutionary event that has created a domino effect throughout the post-Soviet space, and Belarus is not the least, the last.
Throughout the cycle, Lukashenko has been spinning like a top, surviving on subsidies from Russia while maintaining a high degree of independence from Moscow, courting the West as he appreciates this value. But the brutal crackdown on dissent following the August 2020 presidential election, his subsequent fall into Putin’s tight embrace and facilitating a catastrophic Russian intrusion into the roots of the Belarusian dictator’s game.
He sold his soul to Putin and became a stranger to his own people. But its usefulness for the Kremlin’s Lucifer also delivers. Sooner or later, Putin is likely to replace him with someone more accommodating and less eccentric. The train to the West has already left, and now the possibilities of flirting with the West are no longer available.
Meanwhile, if Russia suffers a humiliating defeat in Ukraine and Putin weakens politically, Lukashenka will fall ill without a patron and will fall ill before the wrath of his own people. Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, Lukashenka is likely to be seen as weakened and belittled by the end of the war.
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