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Understanding the situation in Belarus.
By Oleg Kobtzeff, Associate Professor, American University of Paris, publisher of Nature & Cultures. Since August 10, 2020, he has been regularly commenting on the elections in Belarus and their aftermath on France 24, France's 24/7 news channel.
Mass protests: an unprecedented situation for Belarus
However, although public protests had occured in the past, what happened last summer is unprecedented. First of all, these three candidates gained massive popular support. Giant political rallies cheered on three women who immediately took the place of the three persecuted candidates: Svetlana Tikhanovskaya wife of Sergey Tikhanovskiy, Veronika Tsapkala, the wife of Valeriy, and Maria Kolesnikova (or Kalesnikava), the former campaign director of Babaryka. This mass movement achieved three significant accomplishments. The first success was in bringing together the three women and the networks they represented to form a coalition (an extremely rare occurrence in Eastern European politics since 1989, under any regime) and rally around a unique candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The only program of this coordination committee was to obtain a constitutional reform and the organization of new elections to implement a democratic regime.
However, although public protests had occured in the past, what happened last summer is unprecedented. First of all, these three candidates gained massive popular support. Giant political rallies cheered on three women who immediately took the place of the three persecuted candidates: Svetlana Tikhanovskaya wife of Sergey Tikhanovskiy, Veronika Tsapkala, the wife of Valeriy, and Maria Kolesnikova (or Kalesnikava), the former campaign director of Babaryka. This mass movement achieved three significant accomplishments. The first success was in bringing together the three women and the networks they represented to form a coalition (an extremely rare occurrence in Eastern European politics since 1989, under any regime) and rally around a unique candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The only program of this coordination committee was to obtain a constitutional reform and the organization of new elections to implement a democratic regime.
"Zhive Belarus"! ("Long live Belarus!"), "Svo-bo-du"! ("Free-dom!"), "Pozor!" ("It's an outrage!"), and "U-kho-di!" ("Go a-way!") are the slogans heard during the massive demonstration against Lukashenko following his contested announcement that he won 80% of the votes during the 2020 election.
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The demonstrations turn violent....
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The second achievement was to organize a network of volunteers, possibly a half a million, to help Tikhanovskaya jump through the hoops of all the bureaucratic obstacles. In a record time, she managed to collect the hundreds of thousands of signatures on the official petition forms that need to be submitted for a candidate to be able to legally run for the presidency. This succeeded in obtaining her official registration as a candidate, obviously to the fury of the Lukashenko government officials and campaign managers who became helpless to invalidate this candidacy, since they would have had to challenge laws established by themselves. The third and final achievement was, through the opposition coalition network’s vigilance, energy, craftiness and imagination, to infiltrate thousands of voting stations or their surroundings and organize a nation-wide system of monitoring of the ballots and a systematic count of exit polls. The numbers that came out of these exit polls are those that allowed Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to comfortably claim that she obtained more than 51% of the vote and that she should be the legitimate president of Belarus. The same numbers were probably corroborated by data collected by European intelligence agencies, even by the Russian FSB, a close observer of this affair. There could be no doubt that Lukashenko’s claim that he received 80% of the vote is so absurd in the midst of an economic depression and of a sanitary crisis of no precedent (even general de Gaulle at the height of his popularity, in a democracy, never surpassed 70% of the vote) that it not only covered him with ridicule but gave more credibility and even legitimacy to Tikhanovskaya’s own claim to victory. It is what allows the European Union to recognize Tikhanovskaya as the legitimate head of state of Belarus and for President Macron to meet her as an equal.
To comprehend what is happening in Belarus, we must first understand the cause of such massive demonstrations in a country that, so far, had never experienced anything comparable to the Arab Spring or to the colored revolutions in the ex-USSR.
To comprehend what is happening in Belarus, we must first understand the cause of such massive demonstrations in a country that, so far, had never experienced anything comparable to the Arab Spring or to the colored revolutions in the ex-USSR.
Belarus’ exiled leader breaks silence: The first interview with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya - BBC News
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Svetlana Tikhanovskaya interviewed on France 24
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Mariya Kolesnikova's speach on the channel of Victor Babariko (in medalion): "If you are watching this, I have been arrested..." (in Russian)
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August 23, 2020 interview with Veronika and Valery Tsepkalo. : "We insure Russia that this is not against Russia" .
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The causes of the unrest
The first and immediate factor of the rise of anger at the origin of a large and organized opposition was the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic by the government of Belarus, a mishandling which has been probably more disastrous than in Brazil or in other countries. In Minsk, the government was not even trying to minimize the catastrophic nature of the sanitary situation like, for example Bolsonaro. Lukashenko simply dismissed the very reality of the pandemic.
This breach of the social contract – the failure of any government to provide basic protection to its own people – lit a powder keg: the accumulated frustration after years of economic stagnation which is such that Belarus can almost be compared to the old Soviet Union or to other authoritarian régimes like for example Zimbabwe under Mugabe, a stagnation which is a symptom of the dysfunction of all forms of governance inherent to all authoritarian regimes mild or extreme (maybe with the exception of China).
The first and immediate factor of the rise of anger at the origin of a large and organized opposition was the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic by the government of Belarus, a mishandling which has been probably more disastrous than in Brazil or in other countries. In Minsk, the government was not even trying to minimize the catastrophic nature of the sanitary situation like, for example Bolsonaro. Lukashenko simply dismissed the very reality of the pandemic.
This breach of the social contract – the failure of any government to provide basic protection to its own people – lit a powder keg: the accumulated frustration after years of economic stagnation which is such that Belarus can almost be compared to the old Soviet Union or to other authoritarian régimes like for example Zimbabwe under Mugabe, a stagnation which is a symptom of the dysfunction of all forms of governance inherent to all authoritarian regimes mild or extreme (maybe with the exception of China).
The flag of the Republic of Belarus at the moment of independence in 1918 until the Communist takeover shortly afterwards. It was restored as the national flag in 1991 until 1995. It has become one of the two flags of the 2020 opposition demonstrations.
image © by Nature & Cultures Graphics Dept.
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A variant of the 1918 Belarussian national flag : the same with the coat of arms of Pahonia (or Pagonia), symbol of the city of Pskov, then of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that ruled the lands that are now Belarus.
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The flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus.
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The flag adopted for Belarus by Lukashenko's government in 1995. Although Lukashenko originally presented himself as a candidate wanting to break with the past, the Soviet reference is more than evident here.
image by government of the Republic of Belarus
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What is also very important to understand is the consequence of this economic stagnation on the relations between Russia and Belarus: Lukashenko is becoming such an unreliable client, that he may be seen as unsolvable. Governments in this situation become not only unreliable as an ally but, like so many dictators have proven in the past decades, they may bite the hand that feeds them and become dangerous. Already five or six years ago, Lukashenko began expressing some hostile language towards the Kremlin. At the time it did not yet seem to foretell his getting out of control, but suddenly, during last summer’s presidential campaign, Lukashenko crossed a red line when one of his main campaign themes became a nationalistic discourse vigorously hostile to Russia. Moreover, on July 31, in a sanatorium outside of Minsk, Lukashenko’s government arrested 33 Russian citizens accused of being mercenaries sent to destabilize Belarus. Whether these alleged soldiers of fortune were in Belarus on a vodka-drinking week-end with their local colleagues or whether they were in transit through the country on their way to some shady military operation in the disputed zones of Ukraine is unclear, but Lukashenko jailed them trying to spread panic about a military coup against him concocted in Russia. It was laughed off as fake news. Obviously, afraid for the first time of being ousted like the exiled ex-Ukrainian pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent Belarusian president was trying to rebrand himself as a nationalist protecting Belarus against Russian influence, hoping to appear as more anti-Russian – and therefore patriotic – than the opposition leaders, which, as we will see further, are far less hostile to Russia than were the leaders of the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. But not only could the supporters of Tikhanovskaya and her allies see through Lukashenko’s anti-Russian tactic, it now made them realize how desperate he had become and especially, that he had betrayed Russia and could loose support by the Kremlin. Therefore, there would be no risk of Russia intervening to repress the demonstrators. This could only embolden them.
What also emboldens the opposition is the historic precedent of massive popular peaceful demonstrations throughout Eastern Europe in 1989 , then in the USSR itself in 1991, followed by the color revolutions of the early mid 2000s, the Arab Spring and finally the Maidan demonstrations in Ukraine, all of which resulted in the fall of authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes (in the case of the USSR and its satellites), régimes that were far more powerful and ready to respond with force than Lukashenko today.
Lukashenko: dangerous for everyone, including Russia.
Or will Lukashenko further engage his police and armed forces in a bloodbath aiming to spread so much fear that the population would stay home? The danger of him following the path of Bashar El Assad is most certainly clear and present. The escalation of violence perpetrated against peaceful protestors since the election substantiates such concern. But the worse scenario that needs to be anticipated is the internationalization of a conflict that Lukashenko would start, first of all as a diversion (we have seen such a tactic used by the colonels in Argentina launching the Falklands War in 1982 to divert their population’s attention from the country's catastrophic economic situation ), and secondly, to hold his country hostage of the Kremlin : if he started any military confrontation, even limited to small skirmishes, Lukashenko would immediately place Belarus in the danger of being threatened by Western powers possibly even NATO, like Milosevic’s Yugoslavia at the turn of the century. Putin (whose doctrine is contrary to Eltsin's fear of confrontation that let Milošević deal on his own with the enemies his war mongering created) would then have no choice than to protect the Lukashenko régime: no matter how embarrassing is this dictator on the international scene, no matter how disloyal and unpredictable he has been as an ally, and no matter how astronomical is the sum of money he owes Russia which he may never be capable of reimbursing, Putin will always prefer supporting him as a lesser of two evils if the other evil is yet one more opportunity for NATO to expand its territorial influence. Moreover, Lukashenko could play another card if the Kremlin was not fast enough to bail him out: turn to China, a power that has grown increasingly present in Belarus. Professor Bruno Drewski from France's INALCO (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations), one of Europe's leading specialists on Belarus, points out that China has been implementing a strategy of investment in Belarus aiming at creating a backdoor to Poland and the Baltic states, which would in turn become the back door to EU markets. But if Lukashenko, a very clever manipulator of geopolitics, is thinking about China as either a plan B or rather a means of leverage to force Putin's hand, above all, he knows how determined is Putin to prevent the West from profiting from colored revolutions when, as Prime Minister, he provoked Georgia into starting a war with Russia, then annexed Crimea and destabilized Donbass when he was president. This explains why Lukashenko, as he felt increasingly threatened by the street and by international diplomatic pressure against his rigged election and police brutality, created military tensions on the Belarussian-Lithuanian border in mid-September. Putin immediately responded by reaffirming his support for the Minsk dictator. "Mr. Putin told Angela Merkel", warned a Financial Times article by Guy Chazan in Berlin, Henry Foy in Moscow and Michael Peel in Brussels, "that the crisis in Belarus could escalate if “external actors tried to meddle in the republic’s internal affairs”, according to a Kremlin document. Such interference was “unacceptable”, it said." Exactly what Lukashenko was seeking. In private, he could always apologize to Putin for the 33 arrested mercenaries and explain that the anti-Russian language used during the campaign was only a ploy, and that from now on, he would act as a loyal ally of Russia.
Does this mean that there is no hope of ousting Lukashenko without risking an extremely dangerous confrontation with Russia?
How to convince Putin to drop Lukashenko.
Finding a solution has never been so urgent because there exists a window of opportunity to prevent an endless conflict like in the Donbass or the Syria. At the same time, that window is rapidly closing. To lead the necessary negotiations the United States, with an unpredictable executive power, only a few weeks away from divisive presidential and partial legislative elections and still dealing chaotically with the pandemic, and with internal conflicts never seen since the 1960s, cannot be counted on. Therefore, the leadership in reaching a compromise falls on Europe. Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have invited Valeriy Tsapkala who has had important meetings with local statesmen and stateswomen. Lithuania has taken the initiative in greeting Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as a head of state in exile; there she has officially met with leaders as well as in Poland and with EU foreign ministers in Brussels where she was recognized as the winner of the 2020 election, but – at her own invitation – it is France’s president Macron who has taken the lead for an international resolution of the Belarussian crisis. When she invited Macron to meet with her, Tikhanovskaya presented him as someone who could actually influence Putin – a declaration made to AFP, the French press agency, and carried by numerous daily newspapers. But does Macron have the leverage to influence all actors in this affair that could lead to a peaceful resolution? He has the reputation of a realist who, although not recently demonstrating any tangible influence over Putin, has, from the beginning of his presidency, when he invited the Russian head of state to Versailles, at least gained the latter’s respect. Indeed Macron can be firm without showing any desire to marginalize Russia. In , Macron like Putin, in international relations is a pragmatist, an adept of Realpolitik and, ever since Yalta in 1945, realists from the Kremlin tend to appreciate Western realists. Macron could also benefit from the advice and experience of his former boss and predecessor, François Hollande who has been, according to my sources close to him during the Minsk negotiations over the conflict in Ukraine, the Western leader able not to prevent Putin from annexing Crimea and manipulate the covert war in Donbass, but at least persuading him to limit his bellicosity (at the time, it was Angela Merkel received credit for preventing Putin from causing further damage ). Hollande would most certainly help out his former cabinet member if asked, the former's sense of duty as a statesman would prevail over any personal injury caused to him by the latter.
If there is a way of obtaining the Kremlin’s agreement to abandon Lukashenko and accept a less dictatorial régime, it would be above all by guaranteeing that Russia’s interests in Belarus would not be challenged and especially, that the West would not make any moves to turn Belarus into a Western zone of influence. Could that be acceptable for the Belarussian opposition in exchange for getting rid of Lukashenko and accepting some democracy in Belarus? This could be the compromise acceptable to all parties.
This scenario is realistic because the profile of key leaders of the opposition – those who are the obvious choice to govern the country should a transition take place – indicates that they are acceptable for Russia.
What also emboldens the opposition is the historic precedent of massive popular peaceful demonstrations throughout Eastern Europe in 1989 , then in the USSR itself in 1991, followed by the color revolutions of the early mid 2000s, the Arab Spring and finally the Maidan demonstrations in Ukraine, all of which resulted in the fall of authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes (in the case of the USSR and its satellites), régimes that were far more powerful and ready to respond with force than Lukashenko today.
Lukashenko: dangerous for everyone, including Russia.
Or will Lukashenko further engage his police and armed forces in a bloodbath aiming to spread so much fear that the population would stay home? The danger of him following the path of Bashar El Assad is most certainly clear and present. The escalation of violence perpetrated against peaceful protestors since the election substantiates such concern. But the worse scenario that needs to be anticipated is the internationalization of a conflict that Lukashenko would start, first of all as a diversion (we have seen such a tactic used by the colonels in Argentina launching the Falklands War in 1982 to divert their population’s attention from the country's catastrophic economic situation ), and secondly, to hold his country hostage of the Kremlin : if he started any military confrontation, even limited to small skirmishes, Lukashenko would immediately place Belarus in the danger of being threatened by Western powers possibly even NATO, like Milosevic’s Yugoslavia at the turn of the century. Putin (whose doctrine is contrary to Eltsin's fear of confrontation that let Milošević deal on his own with the enemies his war mongering created) would then have no choice than to protect the Lukashenko régime: no matter how embarrassing is this dictator on the international scene, no matter how disloyal and unpredictable he has been as an ally, and no matter how astronomical is the sum of money he owes Russia which he may never be capable of reimbursing, Putin will always prefer supporting him as a lesser of two evils if the other evil is yet one more opportunity for NATO to expand its territorial influence. Moreover, Lukashenko could play another card if the Kremlin was not fast enough to bail him out: turn to China, a power that has grown increasingly present in Belarus. Professor Bruno Drewski from France's INALCO (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations), one of Europe's leading specialists on Belarus, points out that China has been implementing a strategy of investment in Belarus aiming at creating a backdoor to Poland and the Baltic states, which would in turn become the back door to EU markets. But if Lukashenko, a very clever manipulator of geopolitics, is thinking about China as either a plan B or rather a means of leverage to force Putin's hand, above all, he knows how determined is Putin to prevent the West from profiting from colored revolutions when, as Prime Minister, he provoked Georgia into starting a war with Russia, then annexed Crimea and destabilized Donbass when he was president. This explains why Lukashenko, as he felt increasingly threatened by the street and by international diplomatic pressure against his rigged election and police brutality, created military tensions on the Belarussian-Lithuanian border in mid-September. Putin immediately responded by reaffirming his support for the Minsk dictator. "Mr. Putin told Angela Merkel", warned a Financial Times article by Guy Chazan in Berlin, Henry Foy in Moscow and Michael Peel in Brussels, "that the crisis in Belarus could escalate if “external actors tried to meddle in the republic’s internal affairs”, according to a Kremlin document. Such interference was “unacceptable”, it said." Exactly what Lukashenko was seeking. In private, he could always apologize to Putin for the 33 arrested mercenaries and explain that the anti-Russian language used during the campaign was only a ploy, and that from now on, he would act as a loyal ally of Russia.
Does this mean that there is no hope of ousting Lukashenko without risking an extremely dangerous confrontation with Russia?
How to convince Putin to drop Lukashenko.
Finding a solution has never been so urgent because there exists a window of opportunity to prevent an endless conflict like in the Donbass or the Syria. At the same time, that window is rapidly closing. To lead the necessary negotiations the United States, with an unpredictable executive power, only a few weeks away from divisive presidential and partial legislative elections and still dealing chaotically with the pandemic, and with internal conflicts never seen since the 1960s, cannot be counted on. Therefore, the leadership in reaching a compromise falls on Europe. Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have invited Valeriy Tsapkala who has had important meetings with local statesmen and stateswomen. Lithuania has taken the initiative in greeting Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as a head of state in exile; there she has officially met with leaders as well as in Poland and with EU foreign ministers in Brussels where she was recognized as the winner of the 2020 election, but – at her own invitation – it is France’s president Macron who has taken the lead for an international resolution of the Belarussian crisis. When she invited Macron to meet with her, Tikhanovskaya presented him as someone who could actually influence Putin – a declaration made to AFP, the French press agency, and carried by numerous daily newspapers. But does Macron have the leverage to influence all actors in this affair that could lead to a peaceful resolution? He has the reputation of a realist who, although not recently demonstrating any tangible influence over Putin, has, from the beginning of his presidency, when he invited the Russian head of state to Versailles, at least gained the latter’s respect. Indeed Macron can be firm without showing any desire to marginalize Russia. In , Macron like Putin, in international relations is a pragmatist, an adept of Realpolitik and, ever since Yalta in 1945, realists from the Kremlin tend to appreciate Western realists. Macron could also benefit from the advice and experience of his former boss and predecessor, François Hollande who has been, according to my sources close to him during the Minsk negotiations over the conflict in Ukraine, the Western leader able not to prevent Putin from annexing Crimea and manipulate the covert war in Donbass, but at least persuading him to limit his bellicosity (at the time, it was Angela Merkel received credit for preventing Putin from causing further damage ). Hollande would most certainly help out his former cabinet member if asked, the former's sense of duty as a statesman would prevail over any personal injury caused to him by the latter.
If there is a way of obtaining the Kremlin’s agreement to abandon Lukashenko and accept a less dictatorial régime, it would be above all by guaranteeing that Russia’s interests in Belarus would not be challenged and especially, that the West would not make any moves to turn Belarus into a Western zone of influence. Could that be acceptable for the Belarussian opposition in exchange for getting rid of Lukashenko and accepting some democracy in Belarus? This could be the compromise acceptable to all parties.
This scenario is realistic because the profile of key leaders of the opposition – those who are the obvious choice to govern the country should a transition take place – indicates that they are acceptable for Russia.
The profile of the opposition leaders: closer to Russia than we realize?
The most popular of these leaders is Sergei Tikhanovskiy, a professional entertainer (organizer of concerts, nightclub manager and video director) a very popular blogger and vlogger who, although completely unknown less than two years ago, has gained, since 2019, a mass following on his blog Strana Dlia Jizni (A Country for Life) and his Youtube channel of the same title. All features on both outlets are in Russian without even any button to switch to a version in the Belarussian language. Nothing in all of his numerous posts and videos that are still available suggests any hostile position towards Russia.
The most popular of these leaders is Sergei Tikhanovskiy, a professional entertainer (organizer of concerts, nightclub manager and video director) a very popular blogger and vlogger who, although completely unknown less than two years ago, has gained, since 2019, a mass following on his blog Strana Dlia Jizni (A Country for Life) and his Youtube channel of the same title. All features on both outlets are in Russian without even any button to switch to a version in the Belarussian language. Nothing in all of his numerous posts and videos that are still available suggests any hostile position towards Russia.
Sergei Tikhanovskiy in one of the earliest available episodes of the Youtube channel that earned him his fame, explains how police harassment makes it difficult to report on demonstrations in Belarus (in Russian only).
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In a March 2020 episode of "A Country for Life", Tikhanovskiy interviews a middle aged woman laments for ten long minutes cataloguing the social and economic injustice and poverty in Belarus.
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Tikhanovskiy’s arrest last June created a sensation that did not boost his popularity (which was already very high) but it sparked the outrage which started the demonstrations and created the wave of sympathy towards his wife Svetlana, until then a completely anonymous figure, a teacher of English and a translator. Acknowledging this wave of support towards Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, growing into mass movements in June and especially July, the two other opposition leaders attached their trains to the Tikhanovskaya locomotive joining her on the common platform mentioned earlier. These two other opposition leaders are not what you might expect among politicians planning to topple a dictator that had been tied to Moscow for so many years.
Valeriy Tsepkalo (or Tsapkala) in company of his wife Veronika) sends a call to the armed forces of the Belarussian state to obey rule constitution and rule of law, not orders to commit violence against legal demonstrators. (In Russian). |
Valeriy Tsapkala, now a fugitive wanted by Lukashenko's police, was also a candidate who was replaced at the last minute by a spouse, his wife Veronika. Tsapkala is not your typical Eastern European dissident like one of these brave journalists working for a struggling newspaper threatened by the régime, nor some oligarch powerful and rich enough (like Poroshenko in Ukraine) to buy himself enough protections to shield him from some political police or covert thugs. Tsapkala is a pure product of the Soviet nomenklatura – the high-ranking Soviet civil service. After completing his military obligations in the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces, a branch definitely not for mavericks or anyone who could ever be suspected of a disloyal thought for the Soviet Union, he graduated, on June 7, 1991 (two months and eleven days before the August coup that eventually lead to the end of the USSR) from the prestigious MGIMO – The Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the incubator for future Soviet diplomats, which Tsapkala became become just in time before the fall of the USSR. Almost immediately after the independence of Belarus, he became one of the closest allies of Lukashenko. He was appointed as ambassador to the United States with a special rank of minister plenipotentiary in 1997 by Lukashenko and stayed at this post until 2002. One can argue that to be appointed to a prestigious post abroad is a way of being “kicking upstairs”. Tsapkala would hold no other important government position after leaving Washington, but his responsibilities in the high-tech industry in Belarus were extremely important and cannot be separated from the circles of power in Minsk. He obviously had a falling out with Lukashenko, although it is difficult to find a specific date. But did that mean that Tsapkala severed all ties with the Kremlin? On June 24, he fled into exile after his presidential election put him in danger. Of all the countries where he could find safe haven, it was Russia that he first fled to. He claims in an interview (see the video shown here) that Russia's border was the only open border he could cross. Would he had taken the risk of going to Russia if he was seen there as a threat to an ally of Putin? Wouldn't it had the risk of illegally entering a Baltic state much less dangerous than throwing himself in the wolves' mouth entering Russia?
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The third pillar of the opposition is Victar Babaryka, also arrested during the presidential campaign and replaced at the last minute by a woman, his campaign manager Lyudmila Kalesnikava. His ties to Moscow need no further debate: working in the banking system of Belarus since July 1995, he became, in July 2000, the Chairman of the Management Board of Belgazprombank until he resigned in May 2020 to run in the presidential election. Belgazprombank is the Belarussian branch of Gazprombank, the financial division of Gazprom, one of the most powerful industrial institutions of Russian, presently under US sanctions, and partially owned by the Russian state. To imagine that there was no collusion between the head of Gazprombank of Belarus and the Kremlin would be as naïve as to imagine that the head of a French energy company in Africa partially owned by the French state was completely independent from the French government.
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Victor Babariko (Babaryka) tells about himself
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Unless Tsapkala and Babaryka and other lesser known opposition leaders close to them have had an awakening sometime during the June and July presidential campaign when they saw what the massive movement they had sparked could become a new career opportunity as nationalistic leaders opposing the Kremlin, their obvious ties to Russia may be discouraging for whoever dreams of full sovereignty for a Belarus free from Russia. However, although most citizens of Belarus would prefer to be free of any overwhelming influence by the Russian government in the affairs of Belarus as has been the case so far, their preoccupation is more to get rid of Lukashenko rather than to severe ties with Russia. Putin may be detestable to many of them (mostly the younger generations of the cities who never knew the Soviet régime and have no nostalgia for it contrary to many of their elders and rural folk), but the struggle of the Belarussian opposition has never been, like for so many Maidan demonstrators in Ukraine for whom it was so much about conquering their identity as Europeans, almost Western Europeans – a representation of Ukraine being closer to Poland than to Russia. Contrary to the most passionate Ukrainian nationalists who attempted to get Kiev’s parliament to vote a legal ban on the Russian language (the maternal tongue of a large minority of Ukrainians and second language to all of them), the attitude of average Belarusians towards Russia is far more moderate. Also, the cultural bonds between the majority of Belarussians and Russians are far blurrier than between Ukrainians and Russians. Russian is the common language for all. All of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s speeches in front of tens of thousands of demonstrators, who never objected, were in Russian.
All this is what should reassure Putin. But what Putin needs to understand and that European negotiators must insist upon is that dictatorships that exercise violence against their own people present a high risk of committing violence against complete foreigners. In other words, if Lukashenko is ready to go to war against his own people only to stay in power what would prevent him from going to war against a foreign country? Many historic examples demonstrate this risk: Mussolini in Ethiopia, Hitler in Czechoslovakia then Poland, various Latin American or African dictators attacking their neighbors and more recently, diversions to distract a growing opposition in a time of economic decline such as the Falklands war of 1982 (mentioned earlier) or Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.
All this is what should reassure Putin. But what Putin needs to understand and that European negotiators must insist upon is that dictatorships that exercise violence against their own people present a high risk of committing violence against complete foreigners. In other words, if Lukashenko is ready to go to war against his own people only to stay in power what would prevent him from going to war against a foreign country? Many historic examples demonstrate this risk: Mussolini in Ethiopia, Hitler in Czechoslovakia then Poland, various Latin American or African dictators attacking their neighbors and more recently, diversions to distract a growing opposition in a time of economic decline such as the Falklands war of 1982 (mentioned earlier) or Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.
Consensus, and therefore the unpleasant price tag which is compromise, must be considered. While there are figures of the opposition that could be acceptable to the Kremlin as future leaders of a transition régime in Minsk, figures who seem to be capable of bringing at least some democracy to Belarus, Paris and Brussels should take that opportunity and not dismiss it simply because the Kremlin's motives in reaching a deal would be its economic and geostrategic interests rather than democracy itself.
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