Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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By solving a Russian domestic crisis, the Belarusian leader has effectively joined the ranks of Russian grandees vying for Putin’s favor by eliminating irritating problems that could distract the president from his high-stakes geopolitical machinations.
The clandestine standoff between Belarusians and Lukashenka’s regime continues. To ensure regional and global security, the EU needs a coherent strategy in support of the Belarusian people.
While international donors are right to focus on supporting civil society in acute crises, their approach has serious limitations. For more effective crisis mitigation, engagement with civic actors must be part of a broader political strategy driven by local dynamics and priorities.
The fate of Belarus as a state is becoming increasingly tied to the outcome of a future peace settlement. It will be hard for any subsequent government in Minsk to distance itself from Russia economically and politically of its own accord. But once Belarus starts hosting Russian nuclear weapons, it will be downright impossible.
While the growing trade between Minsk and Moscow has alleviated the former’s current economic difficulties, Belarus is becoming more dependent on its eastern neighbor in the long term and ceding its economic sovereignty.
There has never been such a gaping chasm between Lukashenko’s foreign policy ambitions and Minsk’s sheer irrelevance in the eyes of those whose attention he seeks.
Even before Makei’s sudden death, it was hard to see how Minsk could ever return to its multi-vector foreign policy as long as Lukashenko remains in power, not to mention while the fighting rages in Ukraine.
In the eyes of the elite, Lukashenko no longer guarantees stability or solves their problems. On the contrary, he is increasingly a source of problems in his own right.
The war has left Belarus in a predicament, which boils down to depending on Russia for everything without enjoying the advantages of being part of Russia. In combination with the simmering domestic crisis, it leaves ever fewer incentives for the ruling nomenklatura and wider society to value the current Belarusian statehood.
The deployment clearly marks the continued erosion of Belarus’s sovereignty, which the country’s neighbors increasingly consider the new normal.