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(Washington Insider Magazine) The Russian-Ukrainian conflict drags on–nearing a year since military equipment and personnel rolled over the simultaneously real and imaginary lines separating Ukraine from Russia and Belarus. The turmoil and bloodshed are absolute nightmares–and could escalate international violence in turn. The entire fracas is a human rights and international, diplomatic catastrophe, with massive economic consequences which are being felt by nearly all participating and non-participating nations.
While many of the actors in this current international grievance have been analyzed and prognosticated by analysts and commentators alike, one nation has, from the start, seemed strangely involved, and yet, not involved–maybe–but also, maybe not–actually. Belarus, led by President Alexander Lukashenko, remains as mercurial as ever, even when the nation and its president find themselves allied to an aggressor nation in the midst of a major, violent regional conflict.
That nation, the poorest in all of Europe by most metrics, led by the man known as Batka, or father, to his most loyal Belarusians–and “Europe’s Last Dictator,” by his many detractors, is facing many of the same penalties that Russia is facing from Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. Yet by Lukashenko’s own admission–despite some prior bluster–Belarus has “no intention” of fighting with Russia in this conflict, and has not ever been involved in the invasion or occupation of Ukraine per se–apart from that it has allowed Russia to utilize its border with Ukraine as part of Russia’s strategic, “special operation,” which has only in passing been upgraded by the Kremlin to a full-blown war.
While it is understandable that Belarus and Lukashenko would look to remain close to Russia and Vladimir Putin–and one can imagine Russia pressured Belarus for the use of their southern border into Ukraine–Belarus has not always done Moscow’s bidding without some pushback. Yet it remains allied to Russia now, nearly a year since the invasion of mutual-neighbor Ukraine began, against the grain of the world and most of the rest of Europe. Why?
Again, as recent history demonstrates, Belarus is not necessarily a Russian puppet regime, even as it depends upon Russian resources for its own economy and society, and has in the past done its bidding and echoed its propaganda. No, the reason for this cooperation–one suspects anyway–is that while Russia has been looking to create either a pro-Russian Ukraine, puppet states such as Luhansk and Donetsk, or else to absorb Ukrainian land as Russian lands of “the Ukraine,” Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko were likely also offered something in return for at least passive cooperation.
Belarus And Russia: Not A Matter Of Good-Neighborly Altruism To Be Sure
There is little other casual explanation for the behavior of the Belarusian President–unless it can be believed that, not only was the Russian military intelligence able to mislead Vladimir Putin, but that, in turn, Vladimir Putin was able to mislead Alexander Lukashenko in a similar way. It is not so farfetched to believe this to some degree surely, as many western nations, as well as China, also misread the mutual power and abilities of Russia and Ukraine, yet Lukashenko, if he did believe this, did not believe it enough to plunge his nation into a “patriotic” conflict as Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to.
Lukashenko allowed for his ex-Soviet acquaintance to use his nation and its border to pressure and, as fate would have it, invade Ukraine, but would not enter his fractured and frustrated nation into the conflict itself. Batka has echoed much of Russia’s own language regarding neo-nazis, genocide, ethnic discrimination against Russians and the like–but has never been willing to put Belarusians into that nation to assist Russia. While some Belarusians have entered the fracas to fight with Ukraine–and surely Russia too–the nation has not been mobilized to join Russia as it attempts to annihilate Ukraine as it currently exists.
Hence, Russia, Putin, Belarus and Lukashenko would like it to be considered by the world that Russia is just so powerful and manipulative as to be able to muscle passive cooperation out of Batka as he continues to fight for his own political life in a nation that wishes to rid itself of him–but not powerful enough, in this case, to force active assistance from the nation as Russia and their president were able to, concerning Chechnya, Syria, and its other allies.
Since Batka was not willing to try to mobilize his society through patriotism to forget their angst for him and the society he has created and managed and–instead–concentrate it fully on some pretended enemy image–and I don’t see Batka doing something for nothing, for Russia or for anyone else–one can imagine and suspect that he–Lukashenko–wished to reap the fruits of the regional conflict, while simultaneously allowing for distance from direct participation in it–should things, as they did, go sour.
There is no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin intimated to Lukahsenko–as he did to Chinese President Xi Jinping–that taking Ukraine would be rather light work for the Russian military. To this point, in the early days of the conflict, the Belarusian President spoke more like an ally who was confident that Russia would execute its objectives swiftly, and that felt that the international community wouldn’t likely care too much even if it didn’t for whatever reason anyway.
Batka’s initial and subsequent comments regardings nuclear conflict should illustrate this as well as anything else the madman has said thus far–but as things have dragged on, he has sought to change his tune time and time again, while also making it obviously understood that his nation has no intentions of actively participating in the Russian military exercise.
Had the initial outpouring of soldiers across the borders of Russia and Belarus done their jobs effectively–overwhelming or coercing Ukraine as the Taliban did across Afghanistan not so long ago–and had the uproar from such an innovation been what was expected instead of what has been wrought, then I believe that the Belarusian position regarding this entire ordeal might have–to this point–been very different as well. Lukahsenko, with great guile, gave himself some room to wiggle after his recent brush-ins with the dual threats of domestic strife and international uproar–but even allowing Russia to use its borders has left Belarus, its president–its Batka–and most disconcertingly and sadly for all, its people, in a frustrated and angsty situation to be sure.
Belarus, Batka, And The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict: A Very Bad Gamble Indeed
Belarus is in perhaps the worst of all worlds in many senses. While the brutalities that are being inflicted upon Ukraine and Ukrainians are difficult to comprehend, and the Russian nation and society are being suffocated by their own leaders and–to varying degrees and extents–by the international sanction regime which has been placed upon the neck of Russia for its governments “patriotic” invasion of Ukraine, Belarus is neither defending some mythical narrative nor some thriving economy. It is not attempting to escape some massive tangle of sanctions and sanction regimes of all time, and, at this point–were there some secret, national quid pro quo–is not looking very likely to garner any land out of the whole ordeal anyway; any land that could or might be granted to Russia and–subsequently–by Russia at some, hypothetical point down the line, would garner Belarus even harsher penalties from the rest of the world as a consequence.
No, if Alexander Lukashenko allied himself with Russia for nothing, he is simply an old, scared fool. Yet, furthermore, if he allied himself with Putin and Russia, even in this rather passive yet very important sense, his diplomatic calculations are as unreasonable and out of touch with the rest of the world as the Russian Dictator is himself. The bet to make was no bet at all; had Lukahsenko decided to stick this one out as a regional neutral instead of a passive-active partner, Belarus would likely now find itself being courted–or at least entertained to some degree–by the Baltic nations, by Ukraine, by the EU, and by NATO. Lukashenko would be turning his back on his old Soviet ally–something Putin and his allies would likely be furious regarding–and while his behaviour and regime would still require remarkable, sweeping changes to it, Europe has always been willing to work towards innovations with other European nations given the proper circumstances and incentives.
Instead, the dictator of Belarus decided to put his metaphorical money all in with the dictator of Russia. He decided to assist a special operation that doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon, against a people that have no intention of letting go of their nation no matter the cost and loss of life necessary to maintain it.
Now, while Russian, Syrian, Chechen, and various other soldiers, along with neo-nazi mercenaries from the Wagner group and elsewhere fight battalions of Ukrainian soldiers, partisan factions, including far-right and neo-nazi battalions and militias, Belarus has no publicly stated goals or ambitions aligned with the Russian invasion of Ukraine–even as it publicly supports Russia for invading–yet it cheers the Russian bear anyway. It suffers for Russia, yet does not state outwardly why it would put its own people at risk of greater suffering for Russian ambitions; one must, then, consider that–perhaps–Russian ambitions were promised to benefit Belarus, its economy, society, and people in some unstated yet understood manner.
As this writer recorded some months ago, this conflict is the start of the inevitable end for Vladimir Putin. The sanction regime and global outcry seem to be damaging Russia and–sadly–its society even as it pushes on with the conflict with a ballooning deficit, relying on nations who do not care about what is happening in Ukraine, and what the Wall Street Journal recently named its “rainy-day fund,” in hopes of overwhelming Ukraine–even as that appears increasingly less likely in the way that the Russian military intelligentsia imagined.
For Alexander Lukashenko too, this must be understood to be just another phase in the fall of the Belarusian Batka from a power that he so shockingly took hold of so many decades ago–and has never since let go of. While the events of several years ago within Belarus were just–at the time–the latest examples of the recent historical friction within that European “Hermit Kingdom” of sorts–and the punishments dolled out to him, his regime and the nation by Europe and its allies further hurt an already economically depressed nation–the sheer scale of the punishment that it continues to face for aiding the Russian invasion of Ukraine leaves little alternative choice for Belarus and its people; inevitably, they will have to rid themselves of him, otherwise, Belarus will be in even greater peril than it currently sits in.
The president will hold on for dear life, and perhaps the highest echelons of Belarusian society might stay loyal to him as well, but there are many Belarusians who are fighting against Russia in Ukraine with the hope that it could still spark a great change in their own shaken and distraught nation just across the northern border. The military might hold on too–to varying degrees–for however long the powerful and moneyed can retain their trust and respect. Yet once high-ranking members of the armed forces choose democracy over coups, autogolpes or autocracies, there becomes less volition to remain with the losing side while the winning side would still likely require a military force.
Once Lukashenko has lost enough people with enough power–though it may not look as though the loss is so great–it will be just fierce enough to tear him out of office; though it does seem unlikely that he could or would ever lose an election in Belarus, just as–at this point–one cannot imagine Putin allowing for himself to genuinely lose an election, for whatever reason, either. Both fear the inevitable fate that dictators always keep in consideration at the very back of each of their brains–a public revolt against their reign–yet, ironically, both have set into motion by their actions their own downfalls; this is as much a trademark of the dictator as their other widely recorded and observed characteristics and traits.
On Sanctions: Belarus, Russia, And Otherwise
Sanctions have yet to cease this conflict, and are not likely to cease this conflict either–obviously. As they have yet to over the course of nearly a year, there is little reason to suspect that they will in the future with further application and implementation. However–with this statement made and noted–they are truly the dripping water that, with time, hollows the stone, as the great Latin Poet Ovid once noted.
Sanctions take time to cause their greatest, most horrendous, effective, and barbarous effects. While the massive boulder of violent conflict tramples and barrels over and upon Ukraine and Ukrainians, sanctions do little to stifle that from continuing–while hollowing out many portions of Russian civil, military and economic life. The bloodletting will inevitably end with something akin to a bilateral agreement between the two principal parties, and supplementary, multilateral agreements with the rest of the world, and/or the end of the current Russian regime by organic, domestically conceived, and implemented means; however, after the conflict has been brought to an end, the human rights initiatives that will have to be aimed at both the Russian and Ukrainian peoples and societies–due to war and sanctions–will be truly massive and time-consuming endeavors themselves.
The sanction hurts the society now and later, while decaying the larger body and body politic for–in some circumstances–decades and decades; while they don’t spell the end for immediate violence, they do spell the eventual end of the regimes and leaders in question–but at what cost? Thousands of lives and trauma for millions and millions more people.
When the Russian-Ukrainian conflict finally ends, sanctions will have had a part to play in the internal decay of the nation’s ability to develop and sustain itself, surely, but they will not have ended the conflict as their proponents might argue. As this writer has also previously noted in past works, when sanctions are implemented to resolve some pressing, international issue, and have to be maintained for years and even several decades, they have simply not succeeded by the metrics that success is routinely judged upon; they are ancillary, not often primary.
The sanction rots the society it afflicts internally. While Vladimir Putin and Russia were destined to feel this recourse based upon their external ambitions–either, apparently, in Ukraine or Japan–Belarus is more of a volunteer participant that continues to behave as though it has no material or practical horse in a race it has very much maintained sides concerning.
If Vladimir Putin offered Alexander Lukashenko land in Ukraine in return for even passive cooperation, he certainly played his ally and satellite as well as his own nation and people. He tricked him into a conflict that was never going to end in anything other than suffering or misfortune for all primary and ancillary parties involved.
For Lukashenko, whatever perceived possibility or dream scenario that he had that might engender him positively in the hearts and minds of Belarusians, must now be recognized as a grave, grave error of judgment upon his part; the world has more enmity against Lukashenko than ever before, just the same as with Putin, and so while the prevarication of each man and his nation continues, not even the most powerful of autocrats can defeat, murder or suppress time or the ever-encroaching light of human progress themselves.
