Belarus’s Strategy to Avoid War

Executive Summary:

• Belarus is maneuvering to avoid being dragged directly into the hostilities in Ukraine, which has become Minsk’s main strategy since allowing Russian forces to launch the expanded invasion from Belarusian territory.
• Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka stated: “Can we do it? No, we cannot” on whether Belarus would be able to join the hostilities if Poland, the Baltic states, and the rest of NATO would enter the fighting.
• Belarus is trying to raise its value for Moscow and prove it through intensified cooperation as a means of emphasizing the importance of Belarusian stability for Russian interests.

On April 11 and 12, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a working visit to Moscow (President.gov.by, April 11). Lukashenka’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin have become routine—they now meet or speak over the phone almost monthly. The latest summit, however, turned out to be noteworthy in several respects. Many analysts focused on how similar Lukashenka and Putin sounded in their assessments of the war in Ukraine and whether the Belarusian leader’s multiple assertions regarding the need to start peace talks were actually the Kremlin’s proxy signal to the West (see EDM, April 23). Yet, arguably, Lukashenka’s most consequential statement in Moscow related to how Belarus is maneuvering to avoid being dragged directly into the hostilities in Ukraine, which has become Minsk’s main strategy since allowing Russian forces to launch the expanded invasion from Belarusian territory. In fact, he laid out the most comprehensive argument for the Russian audience against Belarus’s participation in the war since the full-scale fighting broke out in February 2022.

In Moscow, a Russian journalist asked Lukashenka how he assessed the likelihood that Belarus would have to directly engage in the hostilities in Ukraine (Belta, April 12). The Belarusian president replied that there is no such necessity for that at the moment and that he believes it will not emerge in the future. He then stressed what appeared to be his main message to Moscow: “Russia now needs such a Belarus—peaceful, quiet, calm, which does its job.”

Minsk tried playing the mediator card during the war’s early months, though Russian troops initially used Belarusian territory as a launchpad for the expanded invasion (see EDM, September 27, 2022). The idea was to stop any further attacks from Belarusian territory on the grounds that Minsk, which has served as the venue for past peace talks, should stay out of the fighting. After three rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Belarus, however, the negotiations moved to Istanbul and then failed altogether (Minsk Dialogue, April 1, 2022). The United States and the European Union named Belarus a co-aggressor and introduced stringent sanctions. As a result, Minsk has had to grapple with a semi-blockade while becoming almost entirely dependent on Moscow (see EDM, September 27, 2022, April 24, May 4, 2023, March 14).

Under those circumstances, the Lukashenka government settled on avoiding direct participation in the war, as the Belarusian army was widely expected to join Russian operations in Ukraine. One approach was to claim that Minsk had to focus entirely on the perceived threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and, therefore, could not distract its armed forces for any activities in Ukraine (see EDM, September 27, 2022). Another was to offer Belarus as a training ground for newly mobilized Russian conscripts (Tochka.by, December 14, 2022). Yet another, and arguably the primary endeavor, has focused on the potential of Belarus’s military-industrial complex to help Russia close critical supply gaps resulting from Western sanctions. For example, Belarus has preserved both competencies and production capacities in micro and optoelectronics, especially for military purposes and space technologies (Minsk Dialogue, February 15, 2023). Companies in other sectors of the Belarusian economy were also instructed to look for niches in the Russian market that they could fill quickly (see EDM, April 24, 2023; May 4, 2023).

As military analyst Aliaksandr Alesin put it, Belarus has become an industrial hub “as significant for Russia today as Ural was for the Soviet Union during World War II” (Belta, November 6, 2023). This approach seems to be working for now and brings several benefits to Minsk. First, it forms the basis for the argument that “Russia now needs such a Belarus.” Second, this approach appears to have ensured the non-participation of Belarusian troops in the fighting and the cessation of any Russian missile attacks on Ukraine from the Belarusian territory. Third, this strategy has helped keep the Belarusian economy afloat and has offset the losses incurred by Western sanctions.

Lukashenka nevertheless indirectly acknowledged that calls for Belarus to enter the fighting in Ukraine have not dissipated entirely inside Russia (Belta, April 12). According to him, such calls often come from Russian “military-patriotic” commentators, especially in the media. Lukashenka rebuffed those calls by saying that they sound “in favor of NATO,” which “wants to drag us into the war with Ukraine.” He asserted that if Belarus joins the hostilities, Poland, the Baltic states, and the rest of NATO would also enter the fighting, increasing the length of the frontlines by thousands of kilometers and requiring Russia and Belarus jointly to cover the expanded front. He then offered a rhetorical question, “Can we do it? No, we cannot. I am telling you: We cannot. So do we want problems for ourselves?”

The Belarusian president stressed that Belarusian troops would hardly make any difference on the Ukrainian battlefield. Currently, Belarus’s border with Ukraine is fully mined and barricaded, with about 120,000 Ukrainian troops deployed there (President.gov.by, April 11). In concluding his remarks, Lukashenka asserted that, at some point in the future, both Russia and Ukraine might need a peaceful Belarus that could help Kyiv and Moscow reestablish communication channels. With this, he was clearly signaling Minsk’s willingness to act as a mediator once again.

Overall, Lukashenka’s exchange with the Russian journalist sheds some interpretative light on Minsk’s strategy to avoid any direct participation in the fighting in Ukraine. Belarus is trying to raise its value for Moscow and prove it through intensified cooperation as a means of emphasizing the importance of Belarusian stability for Russian interests. This is known as “enmeshment”—that is, a cooperative policy of shaping another state’s behavior in line with one’s own priorities. This also explains why Lukashenka and Putin meet so often.