Carnegie Moscow Center
Lukashenko faced the classic autocrat’s dilemma: avoid a revolution by making compromises and introducing elements of real democracy, or—regardless of the growing price of hanging on to power—fall back on costly repression with costly consequences.
Friends of Belarus need to recognize that a revolution is not the end, but merely the beginning of what is certain to be a long and difficult road toward making it a “normal country.”
The Kremlin has had enough of Lukashenko, but it cannot allow Belarus to follow the path of Ukraine and become another anti-Russian, NATO-leaning bulwark on its borders.
The impending collapse of the Belarusian regime and whatever comes next reveal a lot more than events in Ukraine did about possible political transformation in Russia.
It’s not yet clear how the country will emerge from this political crisis, but it’s safe to say things won’t go back to the way they were.
In Russia and Belarus, civil societies are uniting faster than the two countries themselves.
Both Russia and the West may be sick and tired of the mercurial Belarusian autocrat, but they still see him as the lesser evil.
Whatever the truth behind the arrests of alleged Russian mercenaries in Belarus, the incident cannot fail to exacerbate the main problem in the relationship between Minsk and Moscow: a protracted crisis of trust.
Serbia’s authorities broke an old taboo when they blamed pro-Russian radicals for instigating some of the recent violence in the country, and Russia-Serbia relations may never be the same again.
Belarus is moving toward a new geopolitical identity. Instead of its status as a peacekeeper between East and West, Minsk may soon find that it lacks a good relationship with either side.