Belarus crisis: who is pulling the strings, Lukashenko or Putin?

The situation on the Polish-Belarusian border is keeping the European Union in suspense.

It is seen as a new chapter in hybrid warfare aimed at dividing and weakening the EU.

Many assume that the plan to use refugees as a kind of weapon did not come from the Belarusian ruler Alexandr Lukashenko, but was conceived in the Kremlin and then ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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But the foreign policy experts and security groups in Berlin come to a different conclusion. Lukashenko is not the Russians' stooge. The whole thing was thought out and planned in Belarus, the Russian mastermind does not exist, they say. "I think it is a gross misjudgment that Lukashenko is controlled by the Kremlin," says Russia expert Stefan Meister from the German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP). It is about a strategy that Lukashenko and his security apparatus had devised. With it, the rulers in Minsk not only want to force the EU to open closed channels for discussion and, at best, to withdraw the sanctions, but also to regain room for maneuver and negotiating positions with Moscow.

"You shouldn't assume that everything Lukashenko does goes back to Moscow," says Sabine Fischer, Russia expert at the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP) in Berlin.

Moscow supports Lukashenko "and thus keeps him in power".

At the same time, the man in Minsk continues to push the limits of what is still bearable for Putin.

The Kremlin's ability to influence Lukashenko is said to be overestimated.

Lukashenko's amazing sophistication

It is worth taking a look back to understand the reasoning. Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years. He showed astonishing sophistication and great ruthlessness when it came to staying in power. In addition to suppressing the opposition, this included a rocking policy between the West and Russia, which brought him a certain degree of independence. The fraudulent election of August 2020 and the subsequent large-scale protests by large sections of the population exceeded everything that Lukashenko had previously experienced and survived. His regime was battered, the majority of Belarusians were against him, also because of the complete ignorance of the corona crisis that the regime was displaying. The open brutality against the rallies by the opposition resulted in even more solidarity in Belarus,in the west they showed the cynical nature of the regime.

Putin helped in this situation.

Moscow dispatched intelligence officers and PR specialists.

The excesses of violence that Lukashenko's security services displayed on the streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities should disappear, and with them the corresponding images.

At the same time, the opposition should continue to be suppressed effectively, for example through targeted arrests.

The Russians helped out of their own interest.

There shouldn't be any spark of the insurrection movement in the neighboring country, especially not before the Duma elections.

And an elected president, even if the election was fraudulent, should not be chased out of office.

No Majdan in Belarus was the motto in the Kremlin.