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Latest Articles about Belarus
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Russia Predictably Steps up Attacks on US-European Unity
The post-Geneva changes in Russia’s behavior are not quite going in the direction United States President Joseph Biden had indicated after inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet and deescalate the dangerously high tensions between the two countries. Biden seems to have calculated that the... MORE
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Unpalatable Truths About Belarus’s Political Crisis
On June 14, Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) organized a 74-minute briefing to the press (YouTube, June 14). Two out of the three major topics touched upon were 1) the alleged deportation to Poland of three activists of the Polish minority in Belarus and... MORE
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Minsk Flooding Lithuania With Illegal Migrants From Middle East
Angry at Lithuania for providing refuge to the Belarusian opposition and for criticizing Minsk’s recent action of forcing a plane to land in Belarus so that the authorities could arrest an opposition activist, the Belarusian government has deployed a new weapon of “hybrid war” against... MORE
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The Hijacking of the Ryanair Flight Over Belarus: A Russian ‘Reflexive Control’ Operation?
The Belarusian authorities’ forced landing of the Vilnius-bound Ryanair Flight 4978 at Minsk airport, on May 23, and the arrest of the opposition NEXTA Telegram channel founder Roman Protasevich, who was traveling aboard the plane, raised the political crisis happening inside Belarus since last August... MORE
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Belarus’s Political Crisis Reverberates in Russia and Poland
The political crisis in Belarus and reactions to it have impacted this country’s relationships with all of its neighbors. Predictably, Russia’s role in keeping the Belarusian economy afloat has become even more significant as a result of Western sanctions and air blockade of Belarus. And... MORE
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Belarus Far More European and Far Less Eurasian than Moscow or the West Think
Most Russians and many in the West remain captive to the notion that Belarus is not that different from Russia given that its people speak Russian and its authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka rivals, and in some cases even exceeds, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in... MORE
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Belarus: What Did Roman Protasevich’s Interview Reveal?
On June 3, Belarusian TV showed an interview with Roman Protasevich, captured by Belarusian intelligence services after the forceful landing of the RyanAir aircraft en route from Athens to Vilnius (YouTube, June 3; EDM, May 24). This 96-minute-long interview was extracted from four-and-a-half-hour of footage.... MORE
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Irrationality in and Around Belarus’s Political Crisis
On May 28, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to Sochi, where he met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin (see EDM, June 1). Nothing groundbreaking was announced in the wake of their meeting; but Lukashenka ostensibly succeeded in selling Putin on his version of... MORE
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The Kremlin’s Quandary With Supporting an Isolated Belarus
The atmosphere at the Friday (May 28) evening meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, was strikingly businesslike considering the intensity of Western condemnations of the act of “air piracy” five days prior. It was up to Putin, who played... MORE
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Lukashenka Miscalculates International Response to Ryanair Intercept
A couple of decades ago, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was branded in Brussels as “Europe’s last dictator.” At that time, Russia’s strongman, President Vladimir Putin, was cultivating a close partnership with his United States counterpart, George W. Bush, and publicly talked about cooperating with the... MORE