On April 28, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev paid a working visit to Russia’s capital, where he delivered a lecture at the Moscow State University, twenty years after his first similar speech there in 1994. Rather expectedly, the president’s speech was dedicated to the issue of... MORE

Belarus ignored the April 24–26 Prague summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP). Although the statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attributes this decision to the alleged failure of the Czech organizers to abide by the basic principles of equality and non-discrimination (https://news.tut.by/politics/396459.html),... MORE

According to the March 2014 national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS), the most reputable Belarusian polling firm funded by the West and registered in Lithuania, the electoral rating of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has climbed five percentage points since December... MORE

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave an interview to the Russian TV channel NTV on April 13. In it, he assigned most of the blame for the current crisis in Ukraine to its previous government—specifically, to its lack of attention to the Ukrainian economy and to combatting... MORE

Apparently the overall fallout from the crisis in Ukraine has brought about some positive benefits for Belarus, not just negatives. Thus, according to Alyaksandr Milinkevich, a 2006 presidential hopeful, who made a speech at the Brussels-based meeting of the Eastern Partnership’s inter-parliamentary assembly, new opportunities... MORE

Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, and Western hand-wringing in response, demonstrate the depth of the security vacuum in Europe’s East. Comprising Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, this area forms the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) and the European Union’s direct eastern neighborhood.... MORE

Following President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s pronouncements about Crimea being effectively part of Russia (see EDM, March 26), Ukraine recalled its ambassador in Minsk for consultations. After Belarus voted against the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea, damage control on the part of... MORE

Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs may have set a record for evasiveness while formulating its March 19 statement vis-à-vis the crisis in Ukraine. “Belarus cannot be indifferent to the events in Ukraine, including the referendum held on March 16, 2014, in the Crimea, and the... MORE

The hottest issues for Belarus these days are prospects for further economic growth under new conditions—in part informed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Belarus’s official position with regard to this groundbreaking event. Even before the crisis in Ukraine, Belarus faced dwindling economic growth, an... MORE

“In the event of escalation in Crimea and Ukraine at large,” reads the February 28 editorial statement by Nasha Niva, “Belarus will need national unity and restraint. All the political arguments between the [Belarusian] government and the opposition would be worth putting on the back... MORE