Belarus : is the end coming for Lukashenko?

[keybored]

Meanwhile Russia's plans to incorporate Belarus fully by 2030 have been leaked this morning by a coaltion of investigative journalists. Should their aims fail in Ukraine then Belarus will be seen as a consolation prize.

Called it in December.

They're going to take over their one and only ally in the region because they've finally realised they can't defeat Ukraine and they don't want to go home empty-handed.

 

[steeplejack]

so what?

 

[Idaho]

so what?

So these are the politics boards and being an annoying told-you-so is the goal. It helps counter balance the other 95% of the time when everyone on here is consistently wrong on all other predictions.

 

[steeplejack]

oh

 

[kebabking]

So these are the politics boards and being an annoying told-you-so is the goal. It helps counter balance the other 95% of the time when everyone on here is consistently wrong on all other predictions.

Only 95? Amateur....

 

[NoXion]

So these are the politics boards and being an annoying told-you-so is the goal.

I didn't get that impression from keybored's posts at all. Would it really hurt to be a little more charitable in our interpretations?

 

[Idaho]

I didn't get that impression from keybored's posts at all. Would it really hurt to be a little more charitable in our interpretations?

Empathy? Collaboration? Genuine discussion? This is p&p!

 

[steeplejack]

The broader context is that this has been the end goal since September 2020 when the Russian KGB arrived to prop up an embattled Lukashenko and devise a strategy to take down the protest movement, and when Russian specialists took over Belarusian TV because most of the journalists had been sacked / resigned at the crap they were being asked to peddle. Also, given the general impotence of EU sanctions.

"Calling it last December" is like predicting a club will win the Premier League when they are 10 points ahead with three games left.

 

[krink]

I heard a lot of Russians fled to Belarus when the war started. Where will they go when Russia swallows it?

 

[steeplejack]

Nah, mostly they went to Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, the Baltics.

Belarus is a massive Russian military camp currently run by a paranoid security apparatus from the last century so it would have been a strange choice to flee to.

 

[krink]

I'm not the brightest

 

[Dystopiary]

steeplejack Do you think there's any way this couldn't happen? It's been looking inevitable for a while but it's just so sad and wrong and not what the vast majority of Belarusians want. But then Russian troops are being moved in and I don't know if there's much people can do (it was hard enough before). Except cyber warfare.

 

[steeplejack]

Predicting anything much beyond the end of next week is a fool's errand these days so it is very hard to tell.

Yes there is a way it could be stopped, by an armed uprising; the Belarusian regime rules by force alone and does not care that it has no legitimacy. The cases of the railway partisans and the ongoing activities of the cyber partisans shows that the regime can be made very vulnerable with minimal kit and a bit of know how. This is why they are lurching around creating a "voluntary army " of 150,000 to defend the regime in case of an uprising.

However the means by which such an uprising would take place are uncertain and it would have a small window of time to establish itself before the Russian military was ordered to crush it. Also very easy to call for an uprising from the comfort of an armchair outside of the country.

There are a lot of desperate, improverished and angry people in Belarus and the opposition supporters who have stayed out of jail haven't gone away. There is no strategy and no organisation however- there was a lot of talk about it for a while but it doesn't really seem to have gone anywhere. Tikhanovskaya gets a sympathetic reception wherever she goes in the West & US but that doesn't count for very much in Belarus itself.

In short: whilst not really optimistic I haven't lost all hope of change yet. No one can predict whether Lukashenko or Putin will even be around in 2030 let alone wielding power- I suspect at least one of them will be dead by then. Impossible to predict if their successors are as keen to absorb 9 million people and a stagnant / flailing state run economy into an already heavily challenged larger economic sphere.

 

[hitmouse]

Predicting anything much beyond the end of next week is a fool's errand these days so it is very hard to tell.

Yes there is a way it could be stopped, by an armed uprising; the Belarusian regime rules by force alone and does not care that it has no legitimacy. The cases of the railway partisans and the ongoing activities of the cyber partisans shows that the regime can be made very vulnerable with minimal kit and a bit of know how. This is why they are lurching around creating a "voluntary army " of 150,000 to defend the regime in case of an uprising.

However the means by which such an uprising would take place are uncertain and it would have a small window of time to establish itself before the Russian military was ordered to crush it. Also very easy to call for an uprising from the comfort of an armchair outside of the country.

How does everything that's happened since the start of 2022 affect the possibility of Russian military intervention, in your view? I can't think of many good aspects of the war in Ukraine, but one thing that I'd cautiously suggest seems like it might be a positive is that it seems Russia would be very stretched trying to fight that war and also invading Belarus at the same time. Although others might be able to say more on that point?

 

[steeplejack]

They don't need to invade Belarus- they have more than enough military personnel there already. It would depend on the nature of any uprising if the enormous numbers of personnel- both ground and air troops- were enough to contain the revolt.

Edited to add: I don't think the Ukrainians take Tikhanovskaya or her opposition seriously at all. During Biden's speech in Warsaw, his references to the Belarus opposition and their desire for freedom were not translated by translators on Ukrainian television...they skipped over them straight to his references to Maia Sandua's embattled Moldovan government.

 

[steeplejack]

The football journalist Aliaksandr Ivulin was released today after two years in jail on nonsense charges, and is already out of Belarus and in a safe country. He is ready to return to writing and presenting. Take the small wins where we can.

Ivulin was the subject of an international solidarity campaign since late 2020 and a visible representative of those repressed in the wake of the 2020 uprising.

 

[steeplejack]

Belarusian partisans rendered a Russian A-50 reconnaissance / early warning aircraft inoperable in a major stepping up on the anti-regime / anti-Russian occupation campaign. Apparently a drone hit at the plane's home base just outside Minsk. Been heavily reported on twitter over the weekend and covered by mainstream media today.

Lukashenko ensconsed with his securocrats this morning and I guess this is the only topic on the agenda.

 

[steeplejack]

Menawhile the old fart can rest his vocal chords after his shout-a-thon at cowering generals this morning on the plane to China, where he is due to meet Xi Jinping. Not much in this for Xi other than signalling to the US that they will continue to act very independently as regards Belarus with th hope of peeling off the lucrative parts of the state owned infrastructure in due course, and expanding their access to a marketplace hit hard by sanctions.

The Chinese are already building a huge football stadium that nobody needs, for "free", in Minsk in return for significant economic concessions for its car makers.

 

[Dystopiary]

Activists from the Viasna Human Rights Centre have been sentenced to heavy prison terms today.

Ales Bialiatski has already been held since July 2021. Last year he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was unable to collect in person.
Now he has been sentenced to 10 years.

Valiantsin Stefanovic was sentenced to 9 years.

Uladzimir Labkovich was sentenced to 7 years.

The three were charged with smuggling and financing actions violating public order. These pretexts were used to sanction their legitimate human rights work as leaders of Viasna, one of the key human rights organizations in Belarus and a member of FIDH.

The defendants had already endured more than 17 months of incarceration before their trial began on 5 January 2023. The trial was replete with violations of human rights law. The defendants were handcuffed and placed in a cage inside the courtroom, in violation of the presumption of innocence, were denied the right to an interpreter, and were not given sufficient time to familiarise themselves with the hundreds of volumes of case materials, all part of a rigged prosecution. Their defense was no match for the judiciary which has become a mere appendage of the executive branch.

For its role in documenting human rights violations and assisting victims of repression, Viasna became the target of persecution by the executive authorities.

Reacting to the verdict, Ilya Nuzov, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk at FIDH, who is well acquainted with the defendants, notes:

“Seeing our colleagues and friends receive these draconian sentences is painful and enraging. But their courage exemplifies the struggle of the Belarusian people for freedom and democracy that has inspired worldwide solidarity, something the current Belarusian regime will never have.”

FIDH condemns sentencing of its Vice-President and his Viasna colleagues

Ales Bialiatski (wikipedia)

 

[JimW]

Lukashenko's desperate foreign policy flurry: https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89202

Lukashenko’s desire to go back to the way things were appears to be sincere—unlike his insistent messaging that Belarus does not need the West, which only shows that the opposite is true.

...

Lukashenko’s nostalgia for the past is hardly surprising, given the irreversible extent of his dependence on Moscow. In this respect, his whirlwind trips to other countries are also an attempt to relaunch Belarus’s multi-vector foreign policy by finding new friends.

Still, no matter how many foreign visits Lukashenko embarks upon, the reality remains that nearly 70 percent of Belarusian exports last year went to Russia, while a significant proportion of the remaining goods were transported to their buyers via Russian railways and ports.

 

[TopCat]

Not seen the term partisans for a long time. Decades probably. Usually called terrorists these days.

 

[A380]

Not seen the term partisans for a long time. Decades probably. Usually called terrorists these days.

We support brave freedom fighters in their independence struggle.

You provide military aid to insurgents

They fund terrorists

 

[TopCat]

Irregular imperial verbs

 

[Yossarian]

The legitimate leader of Belarus writes:

Lukashenko will be particularly nervous as he owes his position to the Russian president. I beat him in the general election of 2020, before he stole it back with the help of the secret police and Putin. The Russian president sent propagandists, financial support and, eventually, tanks in a bid to prop up his old Soviet ally – then forced him to pay his debts by enlisting support for the catastrophic invasion of Ukraine 18 months later.

The vast majority of my people are horrified at what is happening in Ukraine. The attack on the Russian spy plane is not the first example of resistance. Cyber-partisans have performed a series of audacious hacks on Belarusian state databases. Resistance fighters have blown up transport networks in an attempt to constrict the supply of Russian arms into Ukraine. And hundreds of Belarusians have enlisted to fight the Russian aggressor on Ukrainian territory itself.

As long as Lukashenko barks like a Russian lapdog, the Ukrainian struggle for freedom will be tougher. There will be no secure Ukraine without a free Belarus. Lukashenko’s invitation for Russian troops to perform a hybrid occupation of Belarus has placed my country at the centre of the crisis in eastern Europe. Yet it remains part of the solution. Overthrowing Lukashenko would accelerate victory for Ukraine.

Britain take note: if you want to beat Putin in Ukraine, target his wicked little helper in Belarus | Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

Alexander Lukashenko put our airbases and resources at Russia disposal. His fall would accelerate victory for Ukraine, says Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the democratic opposition in Belarus

www.theguardian.com

 

[steeplejack]

The questions remain..who will overthrow him, by what mechanism, and have they the nous and the wherewithal to kick the Russians out of the country as their first order of business, after Lukashenko?

No doubt the opposition have the will but they lack agency and capacity to turn their fine words into action.

 

[Dogsauce]

Whoever it is would need the army, which is under Russia’s leadership in all but name now anyway (though reports that soldiers are somewhat unhappy about this have been noted)

 

[Dystopiary]

A small and yet notable incident - Belarusian journalist finds herself in what should be a fairly mundane situation, but because of the regime and what happened to Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega, when the plane they were on was forced to divert to Belarus, where both were arrested, it was cause for concern. Hanna is wanted by the regime because she tells the truth about it.



Hanna Liubakova on twitter

 

[Dystopiary]

Sofia Sapega is to be transferred to a Russain prison from a Belarusian one, apparently at her own request.



Hanna Liubakova on twitter

 

[steeplejack]

Viktor Babaraiko, the ex-head of Belgazprombank, one time business magnate, and erstwhile presidential rival, has been transferred from the prison colony to hospital in Novopolotsk. Strong evidence of physical maltreatment and serious health deterioration.

Babariako was sentenced to 14 years under a harsh regime in 2021, on ludicrous tax evasion charges. It's the fate of most challengers to Lukashenko in Belarus.

 

[steeplejack]

Roman Protasevich, arrested when the regime forced down his Ryanair plane in 2021 and since under weird house arrest / psychological pressure, has today been sentenced to 8 years in a prison colony, having outlived his propaganda usefulness.

Lukashenko desperate for everything to "go back to normal" despite tens of thousands of Russian servicemen in training in the country and nuclear weapons stationed there.