Is Belarus dictator seeking detente with the West?
Belarusians are heading to the polls this weekend to cast their vote in an election with a foregone conclusion: Putin-backed dictator Alexander Lukashenko is all but certain to sweep to victory, extending his long grip on power.
Lukashenko, now 70, is the first and, to date, only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making him the longest-serving head of state in Europe.
Opponents say the election taking place on Sunday in the landlocked eastern european nation of 9.1 million is a “sham”. Yet widespread protests are not expected, given the severity of the crackdown on Belarusians who took part in mass demonstrations against “election fraud” following 2020’s national election. Back then, the Lukashenko regime ruthlessly crushed dissent, arresting more than 35,000 protesters, many of whom were tortured in custody or forced to flee the country.
In the years since, repression of government critics has only intensified in Belarus, where individuals can be charged with “extremism” or “terrorism” for acts as minor as criticising Lukashenko on social media, or even just following anti-government Telegram channels. Such repression has prompted western nations to whack heavy sanctions on Minsk.
A “victory” for Lukashenko is by extension a victory for his staunch ally, Vladimir Putin, who used the country as a launchpad for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has even stashed Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil.
That said, while we’re not expecting a change of leadership in Belarus, neither should we overlook the tentative signs of a shift in approach from the country’s longstanding leader.
In recent months, Lukashenko appears to be signalling a desire to ease Belarus’s tensions with the West, suggesting he is uncomfortable about the prospect of permanent dependence on Moscow.
Since July, the Belarusian leader has issued 250 pardons for political prisoners - a move widely interpreted as an attempt to appease the West. As Artyom Shraibman, from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, points out, in the past Lukashenko released political prisoners when he was seeking to improve relations with the United States or the European Union. This paid off twice, in 2008 and 2015.
Lukashenko has also publicly ordered state propaganda outlets to dial down anti-Ukraine messaging and he has vocally backed Donald Trump’s mission to get Putin and Zelensky around the negotiating table, even promising to personally nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he keeps to his pledge to end the war.
Freezing the Ukraine war is in Minsk’s interests. A protracted war severely hampers any chances of Lukashenko easing tensions with the West and bringing his country out of isolation. At the same time, Ukraine’s fall and the establishment of a puppet regime there would create problems for Lukashenko, forcing him to compete with another state for Russian subsidies. Against this backdrop, Lukashenko’s vocal support for a Trump-backed peace deal makes sense.
Of course, a detente between Belarus and the West is going to take more than a handful of pardons. While around 250 political prisoners have been released, another 1,250 remain in jail. Nor would western nations forgive Lukashenko easily for allowing his country to be used as a staging ground for Russian troops.
Even so, these signs that Lukashenko is interested in achieving some degree of rapprochement are revealing, in that they suggest he doesn’t consider his country’s current status as an isolated Russian vassal to be sustainable in the long term.
While Belarus is often labelled a “puppet regime”, it’s a reminder that Lukashenko is not a pure clone of Vladimir Putin. He has his own separate agenda.
Caitlin Allen
Deputy Editor
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