Three legal trials in Minsk attracted maximum attention during the middle of February. One of them has already ended with a verdict—two-year prison sentences to Katerina Bakhavalova and Darya Chultsova, journalists of Belsat, a digital TV channel broadcasting from Poland and not accredited in Belarus.... MORE

The disastrous visit to Moscow of the European Union’s top diplomat, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, on February 4–6, followed in quick succession by three major international events last week, together served to illuminate Russia’s resolute but hopeless self-isolation on... MORE

Foreign policy featured among the central topics of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA), on February 11–12 (see EDM, February 16). This is no surprise, as the ongoing political crisis, which broke out following the August 2020 presidential election, has had a disruptive impact on the... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered a four-hour speech on February 11, 2021, at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA), the sixth such gathering since 1996, when Lukashenka skillfully used this extra-constitutional entity to defeat a rebellious parliament. At that time, Lukashenka enjoyed the support of well over... MORE

On January 25, the government of the Russian Federation adopted a draft version of a bilateral agreement with Belarus on the diversion of some Belarusian refined oil product exports from the Baltic States’ transshipment terminals to Russian seaports (TASS, January 27). At first glance, the... MORE

On February 11–12, the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA) will gather together 2,700 delegates, including representatives of all levels of executive power in the country, members of the parliament, and directors of Belarus’s largest production units. This ostensibly trendsetting event comes amid new findings regarding shifting... MORE

At the end of last year, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko (June 2014–May 2019) announced in an interview that, back in 2018, he had initiated a special operation to detain mercenaries belonging to the notorious Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group (News.ru, December 31,... MORE

Back on August 17, 2020, shocked by a week of powerful post-election protests, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka openly conceded he had overstayed his welcome at the helm of power and promised the workers of the rebellious Wheel Tractor Factory a new national constitution and early... MORE

“Remember, I said a year ago […] that perhaps a time will come when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and I will have to stand next to each other and shoot back. And you took it for a joke. But you now see how life has... MORE

The Belorysy i Rynok newspaper asked three prominent Belarusian analysts to predict the country’s near future. But two out of three only shared observations, not forecasts. Thus, Piotr Rudkovsky, head of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, observed that for any political regime, creating an... MORE