President Alexander Lukashenko managed to fully preserve the sovereignty of Belarus after the collapse of the USSR, creating something like a European North Korea. With his fall, this independence will not be.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, nicknamed Europe's last dictator, may be approaching the end of his reign, which has lasted uninterrupted since 1994. So far, despite giant opposition rallies and strikes at factories, Lukashenka has been adamant - he doesn't seem intent on leaving and is ready to fight to the end - but given the scale of the protests, his departure seems almost inevitable. If he still has hope, it will be on Moscow, which could support his crumbling power with military force and money.
Lukashenko spoke twice with Vladimir Putin over the weekend, and the Russian president vaguely promised "necessary assistance." What is on Putin's mind, nobody knows. The Russian leader has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to present strategic surprises (the most striking examples are Crimea and Syria), but it is doubtful that Putin will directly intervene in the Belarusian situation to save Lukashenko. Many perceive them as two authoritarians, comrades in spirit, but the relationship between Vladimir Vladimirovich and Alexander Grigorievich is very difficult, if we recall how long the latter had betrayed his obligations to conduct
closer integration of Belarus with Russia. And the transfer of Russian troops to
Belarus is fraught with a variety of risks for the Kremlin - from major Western sanctions and the prospects for an anti-Russian insurgency in Belarus to a negative reaction in Russia itself.
If Putin doesn't step in now, the game for Lukashenka will soon be over. But there is one nuance that few people seem to notice amid the euphoria over the imminent fall of the brutal dictator. The moment Lukashenka leaves, the history of the Belarusian state as a sovereign unit runs the risk of ending. Because it was he who fashioned this state amid the post-Soviet confusion. It was under Lukashenko that Belarus for the first time in modern history formed a full-fledged statehood, albeit with a touch of despotism.
Thanks to his harsh rule, the country escaped the fate of former Soviet neighbors such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, which lost chunks of their territory and faced prolonged periods of chaos and war.
In a sense, Lukashenka's Belarus is European North Korea, a relatively small and poor country, but at the same time a completely sovereign state built from scratch in a difficult geopolitical environment. Remove the Kim Dynasty and North Korea will most likely collapse. Destroy the Lukashenka regime - and Belarus, at best, will remain with purely nominal sovereignty, like most European states, which are de jure sovereign, and de facto are little more than the autonomous provinces of the empire, which is governed by Washington, Brussels and London - real centers of power. There are only a handful of countries in the world that have de facto, not titular, sovereignty. Mostly these are great powers like the United States, Russia and China, but there are also smaller countries like Israel, Iran and North Korea. A place in this club was found for Belarus too - thanks to diplomatic resourcefulness, mercantilist economic policy and the iron fist of Alexander Lukashenko. For more than a quarter of a century, he successfully resisted the attempts of both the West and Moscow to "integrate" Belarus, which in essence would mean the country's loss of independence. The problem, of course, is that Lukashenka's personalist regime is inseparable from the Belarusian state. They are a single organism, designed and grown by the same person.
Most likely, after the end of Lukashenka’s regime, Belarus will be swallowed up by “Europe”, where Warsaw will act for Minsk as an older brother and guardian. It will be less likely to fall into the sphere of influence of Putin's Russia, which Lukashenka has always resisted, although he constantly appealed to "brotherly" ties with Moscow. Russian remains the predominant language in Belarus (both Lukashenko and opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya refer to the nation in this language), but the impetus will go towards rapprochement with Europe and distance from Russia. The basic reason is simple: the living standards on the other side of the borders - western and eastern (in Poland and the Smolensk region) - are known to Belarusians, and the comparison is not in favor of Russia.
When the Belarusians elected Alexander Lukashenko as president in 1994, they made a choice, which they had the opportunity to cancel only in 2020. If they say goodbye to Lukashenko, dismantle his state and join Europe, they - for better or worse - will make choices that they may never be able to change.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.