Grigory Ioffe
Grigory Ioffe was born and raised in Moscow, Russia, and graduated from Moscow State University where he majored in Human Geography. He emigrated to the United States in 1989. Since 1990, he has been affiliated with Radford University in Radford, Virginia, where he is a professor of geography. Dr. Ioffe has been active in Belarusian studies since 2002. He has authored and co-authored multiple peer-refereed articles on Belarus, including “Geostrategic Interest and Democracy Promotion: Evidence from the Post-Soviet Space” in Europe-Asia Studies (2013); “Debating Belarus: An Economy in Comparative Perspective” in Eurasian Geography and Economics (2011) (co-authored with Viachaslau Yarashevich); as well as “Belarus and the West: From Estrangement to Honeymoon” in the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics (2011). Ioffe’s book, Understanding Belarus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses the Mark was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2008 and again in 2014. Published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan, his book Reassessing Lukashenka: Belarus in Cultural and Geopolitical Context is based on extensive interviews with the Belarusian leader. Ioffe also co-authored the third edition of Historical Dictionary of Belarus, published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2018. He regularly writes about Belarus for the Eurasia Daily Monitor.
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Articles by Grigory Ioffe
Belarus’s Parliamentary Elections and Opposition Prospects
Executive Summary: Belarus’s government outlawed opposition parties in anticipation of last week’s parliamentary election, contrasting previous elections that had offered a platform for opposition parties to spread their views. Oppositionists...
Upcoming Elections in Belarus Highlight Autocratic Political Landscape
Executive Summary: The upcoming Belarusian elections highlight a political landscape dominated by a few parties that support the existing regime in Minsk amid criticism of limited political alternatives and a...
Belarus Further Strengthens Ties with Russia
Executive Summary: Belarusian President Lukashenka strengthens ties with Russia through various events, emphasizing economic cooperation, joint ventures, and alignment on historical narratives to cement their alliance further. These symbolic gestures...
Dueling Visions of Belarus’s Future
Executive Summary: Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has asserted that expanding economic integration The population is split between the Russo-centric and “Westernizing” views on independent Belarus, with Belarusians seemingly outgrowing the...
Addressing Common Misconceptions About Belarus
Executive Summary: The new law granting Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka life-long immunity was necessary to avoid future political retribution that could destabilize Belarus. Western misconceptions of official Minsk’s actions greatly...
Belarus’s 2023 Year-in-Review
On December 31, 2023, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka declared in his New Year’s address that the “Year of Peace and Creation” has come to an end in Belarus and that...
The Belarusian Triangle: Regime, Opposition, and Ordinary Belarusians
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and leader of the opposition-in-exile Svetlana Tikhanovskaya spent the previous week abroad trying to improve their standing with influential global powers, with Lukashenka visiting China and...
Political Rhetoric Overshadows Belarus’s Economic Reorientation Toward Russia
On December 1, Belta, Belarus’s official press agency, admitted that President Alyaksandr Lukashenka seemingly went off script during his speech at the UN Climate Summit and “added sharpness to his...
The Lingering Debate Over Belarus’s Historical Narratives
On November 23, the latest summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was held in Minsk. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan snubbed the meeting over a rift with the...
A Dose of Hardcore Realism for Belarus
Over three days, Belarusian political analyst Artyom Shraibman presented what seems to be a realistic outlook for the country’s opposition-minded audience (Svaboda; Carnegie Politika, November 7; Zerkalo, November 9). Shraibman’s...
Belarus Finds Economic Optimism Amid Political Freeze
On November 3, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to Astravets, the site of Belarus’s nuclear power plant located 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) from the Lithuanian border (President.gov.by,...
Lukashenka Makes Unconventional Pronouncements on Sidelines of Eurasian Security Conference
On October 26 and 27, the international conference, “Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in a Transforming World,” was held in Minsk. The event took place under the auspices of Belarus’s...
Belarus Looks to Revive Its ‘Multi-Vector’ Foreign Policy
A new electoral season has kicked off in Belarus as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in February 2024. The elections are coming at a time when two parallel worlds...
Ideological Differences on the Israel-Hamas Conflict Divide Belarusians
The mixed reactions of Belarusians to Hamas’ shocking attack in Israel on October 7 underline the ongoing societal divisions in Belarus. For example, the Belarusian newspaper Minskaya Pravda published a...
Will Belarusian Westernizers Recover?
Belarus-watchers, including policymakers, can do more to understand several important facts about Belarus as a national community. First, Belarusian nation-building is still a work in progress. Second, the Belarusian national...
The West’s Approach to Belarus Pushes Minsk Closer to Moscow
Western policy toward Belarus depends on policymakers’ willingness to scrutinize the facts on the ground. In this regard, two narratives undergirding the West’s approach are at war with one another....
Belarus’s Disunity and Its Impact on European Security
In 2022, the Day of National Unity was added to Belarus’s calendar as a new official holiday (see EDM, September 28, 2022). It is celebrated on September 17, the same...
Belarusian Opposition Faces Domestic Realities
In the years following Stalin’s death, a certain type of journalistic doublespeak took shape in the Soviet Union. It allowed those who did not want to taint their public image...
Belarus’s International Standing Improves as Domestic Culture Wars Heat Up
The threat of complete closure of the borders between Belarus and certain European Union member states is diminishing (see EDM, September 7). On September 7, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda declared...
Belarus Resists Becoming a Mere Extension of Russia
According to Diana Panchenko, a Ukrainian journalist considered by some to be a “pro-Russian propagandist,” most commentators seemed to fixate on one particular admission coming from Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s...
Belarusians Reflect on Third Anniversary of 2020 Anti-Regime Protests
Three years ago, massive protests triggered by the rigged presidential elections of August 9, 2020, took place in Belarus. This year, the anniversary has inspired a number of musings on...
New Sanctions and Lukashenka’s Improvised Reaction to Belarus’s Western Neighbors
On August 1, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a working visit to Kamenets district in Brest oblast, right on the border with Poland. His major task was to personally observe...
Changing the Tune on Western Sanctions Against Belarus
A new, seventh package of European sanctions is about to be imposed on Belarus. And by the end of the week, its full details will be published. What is known...
Belarus’s Lukashenka Is Busier Than Ever
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has long accepted the sobriquet of “dictator.” In fact, he loves to characterize himself in that way. Recently, during his July 1 address to the nation,...
The NATO Summit, Western Sanctions and Belarus’s Capacity to Act Independently
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit on July 11 and 12 was held just 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border. Valer Karbalevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted that, in...
Belarus’s Lukashenka as a Mediator?
On July 6, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka held a three and a half hour–long press conference with domestic and international journalists hailing from Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom,...
Debating Lukashenka’s True Role in Deflecting Russia’s Domestic Crisis
A discussion of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s role in bringing Russia’s mutiny to an end continues unabated—in Minsk, among Belarusians-in-exile and among Belarus-watchers around the world. In Minsk, Lukashenka has...
Political Posturing, Facts on the Ground and the West’s Belarus Policies
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s putative role in reversing Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow is now on everyone’s mind. Preempting alternative opinions, some opposition analysts have already posited that Lukashenka’s role...
Military Buildup in Belarus and the Exiled Opposition’s Downfall
On June 13, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was interviewed by Olga Skabeyeva of Russia One, a Moscow-based television channel (President.gov.by, June 14). On the eve of the interview, the Russian...
Belarus Policy Lesson? Pursuing Geo-Strategic Interests May Be More Productive Than Direct Democracy Promotion
Relationships between geo-strategic aspirations and achieving value-laden results such as democracy promotion have never been easy. Due to Belarus’s cultural heterogeneity, crude geopolitics have invariably achieved more in both areas...
New Rumors on Lukashenka’s Ill Health and What Really Matters
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka may soon be repeating these words that are commonly attributed to Mark Twain. Less than two weeks after...
External and Internal Factors of Belarus’s Political Dynamics
Belarus’s hyper-dependency on multifaceted external factors and the role of the Russo-Ukrainian war in increasing this dependency has been further confirmed by three recent events (see EDM, April 26). First,...
Lukashenka’s Illness and the Uproar Over It
On May 18, a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization took place in Minsk. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka personally greeted the respective speakers of the...
Belarusian Opposition Preaching Gloom Amid Growing Distress
Like Russia, Belarus maintains the Soviet tradition of the so-called subbotniks, days of volunteer unpaid work on weekends. During the subbotnik on April 22, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka planted trees...
Debating Sanctions Against Belarus: How to Fix the Broken Record?
At a recent event organized by the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (BSRL), the topic—“Can the West Exert Influence on Lukashenka?”—was debated between two analysts. Ryhor Astapenia, one...
Belarus and Its Neighbors in a Time of War: Attitudes, Perceptions and Realities
As a relatively small country squeezed between two increasingly antagonistic centers of power, Russia and the European Union, Belarus has always stood out for its dependency on multifaceted external factors....
Sisyphean Labor: Extracting Slivers of Optimism From Events in Belarus
As every cloud has a silver lining, the current situation in Belarus is no exception. Admittedly, this is hard to prove, but four recent events may have cause for some...
Exiled Belarusian Sociologist Critiques the West’s Belarus Policies
On April 5, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to Moscow for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that lasted six hours until 2:00 AM the next...
Lukashenka Addresses the Nation
On March 30, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his state of the nation address to the Belarusian parliament (Belta, March 31). The speech lasted over three hours and was followed...
A Closer Look at Belarus’s New Political Party and Its Leader
On March 18, the pro-presidential social movement “Belaya (White) Rus” became a political party. This decision was made by the organization’s inaugural congress in its new capacity. The respective aspirations...
What to Make of the Escalating Repressions in Belarus?
In Belarus, a hunt for “extremists” has suddenly intensified. Primarily, both the audacious attack on the Russian A-50 aircraft (see EDM, March 8) and the simultaneous finale of two lengthy...
Can a Deal Be Negotiated With Belarus’s Lukashenka?
From January 24 to February 3, Chatham House conducted another (14th) online national survey of Belarusians. The analyzed sample consisted of 813 urban respondents. “Despite the fact that our sample...
Belarus’s Independence and Its Putative Defenders at a Time of War
The Belarusian political regime headed by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is almost 29 years old, and its endurance should be scrutinized by advanced political scientists. Suffice it to say that it...
Belarus’s Disappearing Flexibility for Geopolitical Maneuver
Squeezed between two major centers of power, Russia and the European Union, Belarus is supremely vulnerable to external influences. Consequently, one lingering area of inquiry is how exactly outside factors...
Putting the Belarusian President’s Unexpected Press Conference in Context
The verdict was swift. Even before the unexpected three-hour press conference held by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka on February 16 for foreign journalists had not yet ended, Valer Karbalevich of...
Competing Media Agendas and the Geostrategic Interests of Belarus’s Southern Neighbor
The agendas of the Belarusian official and opposition-minded media outlets create the impression of two parallel worlds. While some common themes exist, such as the creation of new government entities,...
What Can Be Done to Slow Down Belarus’s Eastern Drift?
On January 22, Belarusians identifying as pro-Western (as opposed to those who identify as Russo-centric) celebrated the 160th anniversary of the so-called Kastus Kalinowski uprising on Belarusian soil. Thus, Belarusian...
Domestic Effects of Belarus’s ‘Partial Blockade’
Numerous Russian media outlets (e.g., RBC, January 22) echoed the content of a recent US media report, according to which rare earth metals necessary for the production of microchips, electronics...
Is Belarus Entirely Under Russia’s Thumb?
Belarusians are divided, and the politically conscious Belarusians live in their own information bubbles and echo chambers. This is the principal conclusion that Yury Drakakhrust of the Belarusian service of...
Belarus’s Political Prisoners and the West
The Belarusian government’s onslaught on those implicated in the 2020 post-election protests does not show signs of abating. In fact, this effort is radicalizing despite it being more than two...
Tensions Simmer in Belarus: Delusions, Sanctions and Actual Decision-Makers
If there is any leitmotif to the current developments in Belarus, it would be mostly rooted in attempts at socioeconomic survival while avoiding immediate participation in Russia’s war effort against...
Contrasting Messages Emanating From Belarus
According to human rights watchdog Viasna, as of December 31, 2022, almost 1,450 political prisoners remain locked away in Belarus (Viasna, December 31, 2022). On December 14, 2022, the Belarusian...
Belarus: Societal Divisions and Exiled Opposition
Alexander Klaskovsky, one of the longest-serving opposition-minded journalists in Belarus, recently leveled criticism against Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s so-called “United Transitional Cabinet,” a self-proclaimed government-in-exile. The three major targets of Klaskovsky’s criticism...
Belarusians Debate Vladimir Makei’s Legacy
The Belarusian press has been actively debating the legacy of Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, who passed away suddenly on November 26 at the age of 65, supposedly from a...
Belarusian Officialdom and Opposition-in-Exile Fight for Self-Preservation
The news of Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei’s sudden death has, for now, overshadowed all other news coming from Belarus. Exactly two years ago, Makei’s deputy Oleg Kravchenko also died...
Western Belarus Policies: The Geostrategic and Moral Dimensions
In recent weeks, Belarusian civilians have been called up for military training in increasing numbers, with mobilization instructions attached to their military identification. Is this a prelude to entering the...
Challenges Are Mounting for Fragile Belarusian Statehood
Dmitry Gurnevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) analyzed the biographies of Belarus’s top-ranking military officers and concluded that many of them were either born in Russia, graduated from Russian...
Counterintuitive Consequences of Western Disregard for Belarus
In the wake of caustic remarks directed by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka toward former British Prime Minister Liz Truss (YouTube, October 22), the former Belarusian diplomat, now a political commentator...
Soul-Searching in the Opposition Amid Growing Threats to Belarusian Sovereignty
The Belarusian opposition media continues to be frustrated with Ukrainians' worsening attitude toward Belarusians in their country. The September 2022 telephone and online survey of 2,000 Ukrainians by the Kyiv-based...
Bravado or Strategic Helplessness: What Is Going on Behind the Façade in Minsk?
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s trip to Astana, Kazakhstan, on October 13 to participate in the 6th Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) turned...
Belarus’s Situation: Is Fear an Explanatory Variable?
It is exceedingly difficult to cobble together a rational formula to explain the current state of affairs in Belarus. Nevertheless, the idea of fear, and its underpinnings, may serve as...
Minsk Harnesses Anti-Polish Sentiment
On September 23, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei spoke at the most recent United Nations General Assembly session in New York (Facebook.com/belarusmfa, September 23). Opposition-minded commentators focused on what seems...
What Did Lukashenka’s Open History Lesson Demonstrate?
Oleg Manaev, a seasoned Belarusian sociologist, whose polling firm conducted quarterly national surveys of Belarusians from the early 1990s until 2016, when it was shut down by the Minsk authorities,...
Political Maneuvering in and Around Belarus
It has been relatively calm in Belarus lately. The economic decline continues (see EDM, August 9); Russian artillery keeps targeting Ukraine from Belarus’s territory; and citizens of Latvia, Poland and...
Belarusians at Home and Abroad Are Growing Apart
Musings of two Belarusian historians, Yury Shevtsov and Alexander Bely, symbolize the current condition of Belarusians’ cultural divide. Both consider the 1596 emergence of the Uniate Church, preserving the Eastern...
Belarusian Opposition and the West’s Belarus Policies
On August 8–9, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the New Belarus Conference took place. It was summoned by the office of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, formerly a 2020 presidential hopeful, who may have won...
Belarus’s Economic Downturn
In mid-July 2022, Moody’s and Fitch—two of the three international credit rating agencies—declared that Belarus is in technical default on its debt. Government economists consider this qualification politically prejudiced (Sputnik,...
Belarus’s Sovereignty and Political Opposition Risk Losing Relevance
On July 27, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk “people’s republic,” paid a visit to the city of Brest, Belarus. He laid a wreath at the eternal flame in...
Whose Judgments on Belarus Deserve Attention?
Within the span of a couple of days (July 20–21), a number of major Belarusian commentators made suggestive public statements: President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave an hour-long interview to Agence France-Presse;...
Belarusian Opposition: Feuds Abroad, Harsh Treatment at Home
On July 11–12, answering the question of who should speak on behalf of Belarusians became even more confusing (see EDM, July 12). On those days, in Berlin, the 2nd Forum...
Who Should Speak on Behalf of Belarusians?
In-person polling in Belarus by opposition-minded sociologists has been considered taboo for quite some time. At the beginning of July 2022, the results of two national surveys, both using indirect...
Popular Support for Belarusian Government Grows Amidst Fears of War Next Door
In late June, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei gave an extensive interview to Sputnik, a state-backed Russian media and propaganda outlet with affiliates in several countries, including Belarus. One of...
Lukashenka, Putin and Tikhanovskaya: A Long Echo of Belarus’s Historical Division
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid yet another visit to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, last week, June 23–25. Prior to this, the two heads of state had already met five...
Belarus’s Geopolitical Uncertainties and Its ‘Civilizational Choice’
Uncertainty hangs over Belarus’s geopolitical situation. Will the Belarusian army eventually join Russia’s war effort? Will those issuing Western sanctions distinguish between Russia and Belarus? Are there any prospects whatsoever...
Surveys and Opinion Makers Shed Light on Events Affecting Belarus
Between April 8 and 18, Chatham House conducted its ninth online survey of Belarusian urbanites since August 2020. According to that latest poll, 40 percent of Belarusians do not support...
Is Belarus Still Able to Pursue Its Own Interests?
The authorities’ crackdown on the massive 2020 post-election protests resulted in a cardinal change to Belarus’s international relations and its regional security nexus. From aspiring to be a middle ground...
Belarusian Foreign Policy in Circumstances Beyond Minsk’s Control
The predominant feature of Belarus’s current situation vis-à-vis its neighbors is uncertainty. Will Belarus eventually participate in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine? Will Belarus retain its statehood or fall victim...
The Ailing Belarusian Economy and Lukashenka’s Plea on Big Brother’s Behalf
According to a January 2022 forecast published by the World Bank, the Belarusian economy would contract by 2.8 percent over the course of the year. But in April, the international...
May 9 Celebration in Belarus a Setback to Nationalization of Historical Memory
The ninth online poll of 823 urban-based and internet-using Belarusians, conducted by Chatham House during April 8–18 (Svaboda.org, May 6), showed that roughly one-third of respondents support Russia’s war and...
Belarusian President Speaks to the West
While the Belarusian opposition insists that President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is unworthy of attention because he no longer has anything to offer to the collective West (YouTube, May 2), opposition leader...
Belarus and the War: A Survey and a Morality Debate
In Warsaw, on April 26, the head of the non-governmental organization Belarusian Analytical Workroom, Andrei Vardomatsky, described the outcome of his group’s telephone poll of 1,000 Belarusians conducted in mid-March....
Leaked Makei Letter Suggests Belarusian Efforts to Reach out to the West
As Russia continues to try to subjugate Ukraine in an unprovoked war of aggression, Belarus has endeavored to keep its options open (see EDM, April 18). Further evidence of this...
In Russia’s Camp but Keeping Its Options Open: Belarus’s Maneuvering During the War
In a store at one of Minsk’s shopping malls that sells Russian-made t-shirts decorated with a “Z,” the symbol of the Russian military offensive against Ukraine, the shop owner admitted...
‘Accomplice’ No More? How the War in Ukraine Stokes Anxieties in Belarus
Both directly and indirectly, Russia’s ongoing “special military operation” in Ukraine (launched by the Kremlin on February 24) triggers anxieties across the border in Belarus. Thus, on March 30, the...
Divining Belarus’s Future Amidst International and Domestic Unrest
How long will Belarus remain a pariah in the eyes of its neighbors? According to Yury Drakakhrust of Radio Liberty, this depends on whether the Belarusian army enters the Russo-Ukrainian...
War Polarizes Belarusian Analysts and Belarusians Themselves
The Belarusian service of the Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, founded in 2014 and blocked by the Russian government on March 5, recently published an extensive interview with Yegor Lebedok,...
What Do Belarusians Think About the War?
Belarus’s President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his analysts supporting and protesting the war (the latter are mainly outside Belarus) contribute to our nuanced understanding of the situation. Thus, on March 15,...
Belarusian Analysts Look for Way out of Russia’s War in Ukraine
On March 11, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a working visit to Moscow and held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that lasted five hours. Immediately ahead of the...
Lukashenka’s Intentions and the Reasoning of the Warring Parties
At the March 1 meeting of the Belarusian Security Council, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka declared that Belarus is not participating in the war in Ukraine. However, adding to the intrigue of...
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the War in Ukraine
On February 26, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka expressed anger about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine rejecting the idea of the Ukrainian delegation coming to Minsk right away to hold talks...
Economic Sanctions Deepen Societal Divide in Belarus
On February 18, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka visited Moscow and held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. In a statement to the media, Lukashenka mentioned that military-political issues have...
Will There Be War? A View From Belarus
The showdown over Ukraine continues to keep experts guessing. On the one hand, warnings that the invasion could start at any time emanate from Washington. On the other hand, there...
Belarus and the Showdown Over Ukraine
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka annually convenes a meeting devoted to the major tasks of the state border service. During the latest such meeting, on January 24, he unexpectedly responded to...
Lukashenka’s State of the Country Address: No Contrition and No Exit
On January 28, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his state of the country address to the Belarusian parliament (YouTube, January 28). This is an annual event, though, in 2021, he skipped...
Belarus’s Politics of Memory Swing Back Toward Russo-Centrism
On January 5, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed into law a decree on “Genocide of the Belarusian People During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945”; it envisages criminal responsibility for public...
Kazakhstan, Fertilizer and Belarus’s Political Crisis
Since the start of 2022, two unexpected “black swan” events have indirectly altered last year’s calculus regarding the expected evolution of the Belarusian political crisis. First, Belarus joined the Russia-led...
Belarusian Political Crisis: Untenable Risks and Achievable Goals
According to Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from June 2020 to the end of July 2021, Polish consulates issued a total of 178,711 visas for Belarusians, of which 12,190 were...
President Lukashenka’s Pronouncements and Western Sanctions on Belarus
On November 30, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a 2.5-hour-long interview to Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of Russia’s media giant VGTRK (YouTube, December 2). Subsequent commentary online and in...
Europe Is Talking to Minsk
On November 15 and 17, Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor of Germany, telephoned Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (RBC, November 17). While, on November 14 and 16, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir...
The Internationalization of the Belarusian Political Crisis Not Working Out in the West’s Favor
The political crisis in Belarus is far from over. Its internationalization along the lines of a geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the West began well before the current showdown over...
Russia and Belarus Sign a Package of Union State Programs
On November 4, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a package of 28 Union State programs, formerly called “road maps,” for economic integration with Russia. “Clearly spelled out in the Union...
Epiphenomena in the Belarusian Political Crisis
An epiphenomenon is a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process—so in a way, it is an occurrence whose significance is blown out...
Belarusian-Russian Economic Dependency and Trade Wars: Is There a Contradiction?
Two stories involving Belarus that have been unfolding over the past few weeks appear to contradict each other on the surface. These are the growing economic dependency of Belarus on...
The Belarusian Opposition and the Five Stages of Grief
Writing about the Belarusian opposition (BO) can be risky because any expressed negativity toward the opposition leaders is perceived in some quarters as tantamount to supporting dictatorship. Certainly, a healthy...
Who Is Losing Belarus?
On October 7, the European Parliament (EP) passed a resolution demanding that the European Union (EU) impose the fifth package of economic sanctions on Belarus, including additional sectors, such as...
Hopes for Solution to Belarus’s Political Crisis Derailed Again
On September 30, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave an hour-and-seven-minutes-long interview to CNN (President.gov.by, September 30). He agreed to speak under the condition that the cable news channel publish a...
Divining the Meaning of Recent Developments on Belarus’s Two Geopolitical Flanks
As a fairly small (population-wise) country squeezed between Russia and the European Union, Belarus is destined to be a geopolitical tuning fork, whose reactions and demeanor, if properly understood, provide...
Sanctions on Belarus Will Not Bring Regime Change
With reference to Nasha Niva, the Belarusian service of Radio Liberty reports that Deutsche Bank, the main correspondent bank of Belarusian state-owned financial institutions, has closed its correspondent accounts in...
Is the Belarusian Political Crisis Finally Coming to an End?
The principal outcome of the Russian-Belarusian summit on September 9 was the announcement that all 28 “roadmaps”—now called “Union State Programs”—have finally been endorsed. Russian President Vladimir Putin disclosed that...
The Unstable Equilibrium of Belarus’s Political Crisis
The political crisis in Belarus seems to have entered the stage of unstable equilibrium both inside the country and along its perimeter. A system in this position accelerates away from...
Summing Up: One Year Since the Disputed Presidential Elections in Belarus
On August 9, 2021, exactly one year since the ill-fated last presidential election, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a press conference that lasted more than eight hours. On online social networks,...
A Year On: The International Dimension of Belarus’s Political Crisis
The international situation both triggered the ongoing crisis in Belarus—at least in the minds of some observers—and continues to have implications for its evolution. According to Belarusian KGB head Ivan...
The Diplomatic Triumph of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and the Fate of the Belarusian Opposition
On July 28, United States President Joseph Biden held a 15-minute face-to-face talk with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who many in the West consider to be the leader of Belarusian opposition. The...
Belarusian Politics and the Tyranny of Simple Solutions
On July 20, Belarus’s President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a foreign policy revision meeting. That same day, the Roundtable of Democratic Forces, a group headed by Yury Voskresensky, published a draft...
Minsk Retaliates Against European Sanctions by Ridding Country of ‘Agents of Western Influence’
In Belarus, the government’s assault on media outlets and other entities with Western funding continues. Just on July 14, the authorities conducted searches of the offices of 23 entities, including...
Belarus’s Political Crisis as a Theater of the Absurd
On July 6, a Belarusian court handed a 14-year prison sentence to Victor Babariko (BelTA, July 6), perhaps President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s strongest political rival. Babariko was arguably best positioned to...
Europe’s Sanctions and Belarus: A Hammer and the Nail
After the introduction of sectoral sanctions by the European Union (see EDM, June 30), Minsk suspended its membership in the Eastern Partnership initiative as well as in the Readmission Agreement...
Brussels’s Virtue Signaling on Belarus May Prove Counterproductive
On June 24, the Council of the European Union introduced so-called sectoral sanctions against Minsk. According to the well-informed Russian business daily Kommersant, despite their formidable appearance, the actual strength...
Unpalatable Truths About Belarus’s Political Crisis
On June 14, Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) organized a 74-minute briefing to the press (YouTube, June 14). Two out of the three major topics touched upon were 1)...
Belarus’s Political Crisis Reverberates in Russia and Poland
The political crisis in Belarus and reactions to it have impacted this country’s relationships with all of its neighbors. Predictably, Russia’s role in keeping the Belarusian economy afloat has become...
Belarus: What Did Roman Protasevich’s Interview Reveal?
On June 3, Belarusian TV showed an interview with Roman Protasevich, captured by Belarusian intelligence services after the forceful landing of the RyanAir aircraft en route from Athens to Vilnius...
Irrationality in and Around Belarus’s Political Crisis
On May 28, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to Sochi, where he met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin (see EDM, June 1). Nothing groundbreaking was announced in the...
Belarus Stages What It Sees as Major Security Operations
On Sunday, May 23, Belarus made headlines around the world for diverting a commercial flight. Ryanair’s Boeing 737-8AS, in transit over Belarus from Athens to Vilnius, had to make an...
Belarusian Political Standoff: Entrenchment on All Sides
On May 12, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andrii Taran stated that, for now, his country did not face any immediate danger of a Russian invasion through neighboring Belarus. Nonetheless, he assured...
Going Over the Top in and Around Belarus
Belarus’s political crisis involves four principal actors. Two of them are domestic: the political regime, headed by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and the protest movement, whose leaders are currently in Lithuanian,...
Belarusian State-Run TV Scores Propaganda Victories
In his April 29 interview to Euronews, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had this to say about the crackdown on the protest movement that followed the August 9 presidential elections:...
Minsk Is Trying to Unfreeze Relations With West, Ukraine
Aside from the April 22 Russia-Belarus summit, which did not turn out to be groundbreaking, three other stories have dominated news headlines pertaining to Belarus over the past week or...
An Alarming Twist in Belarus’s Political Crisis
The socio-political conflict in Belarus has the potential to grow even more acute, even though street rallies have all but disappeared and the authorities have, for several months now, pursued...
Minsk Wages Diplomatic War on Multiple Fronts
On April 4, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka proposed to “optimize” the number of Belarusian embassies and their staff around the world. Essentially, the Belarusian leader declared, if Belarus’s “diplomatic presence” in...
The State of Disunion in Belarus
The key descriptor for Belarusian society at the moment may be “disintegration.” Namely, Belarusians appear not to see eye to eye on three major issues. One is their attitude toward...
Belarus’s Ties With the West: The Implacable Downward Spiral
Belarusian authorities denied the official request of the opposition (see EDM, March 17) to celebrate Freedom Day on March 25. A year ago (April 2020), the government declared that anyone...
Parallel Worlds in Belarus’s Public Politics
Signs of the Belarusian government’s rising self-confidence in the face of domestic protests and Western reproaches have been multiplying in recent weeks. First of all, arrests of opposition activists continue. ...
Reshaping Belarus’s Political Scene
Four recent events have the potential to affect the ongoing evolution of the Belarusian political scene. First, on March 6, the founding congress of the pro-Russian party Soyuz (Union) took...
Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Social Cohesion in Belarus
Three interrelated factors continue to shape Belarus’s future: the actions and initiatives of the political regime, prospects of the protest movement, and the evolving social climate. Alluding to the French...
Sochi Summit Contra the West’s Belarus Policies
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka landed in Sochi, Russia, on Friday, February 19, and left on Tuesday, February 23. His meeting with President Vladimir Putin occurred on Monday and lasted six...
Amidst Repressions, Minsk Is Snapping Back
Three legal trials in Minsk attracted maximum attention during the middle of February. One of them has already ended with a verdict—two-year prison sentences to Katerina Bakhavalova and Darya Chultsova,...
The All-Belarusian People’s Assembly: A Gathering of Winners?
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered a four-hour speech on February 11, 2021, at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA), the sixth such gathering since 1996, when Lukashenka skillfully used this extra-constitutional entity...
The Complexities of Measuring Belarusian Public Opinion
On February 11–12, the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA) will gather together 2,700 delegates, including representatives of all levels of executive power in the country, members of the parliament, and directors...
Belarusian Realities: Between Dreams and Policy Objectives
Back on August 17, 2020, shocked by a week of powerful post-election protests, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka openly conceded he had overstayed his welcome at the helm of power and...
Strategic Thinking and a Fight for Belarusian Democracy
“Remember, I said a year ago […] that perhaps a time will come when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and I will have to stand next to each other and shoot...
Even the Near Future Is Uncertain in Belarus
The Belorysy i Rynok newspaper asked three prominent Belarusian analysts to predict the country’s near future. But two out of three only shared observations, not forecasts. Thus, Piotr Rudkovsky, head...
Smaller Protests Persist, but Life Goes on in the Republic of Belarus
What will happen in Belarus, and when? Any attempt at addressing this question would need to invoke such variables as the level of unity of Belarusian society, actions of the...
Year 2020 in Review: The Saga of a Bitterly Divided Belarusian Society
At the beginning of 2020, Belarus was becoming increasingly assertive and willing to resist Russian pressure tactics (see EDM, January 14, 2020). And that assessment remained valid at least until...
The Changing Religious Landscape of Belarus and Its Impact on Belarusian Nationalism
Executive Summary Historically, no religious denomination has categorically or systematically promoted Belarusian nationalism. Rather, for centuries, an Orthodox-Catholic contest over which faith would play a dominant role in Belarusian lands...
Public Relations and Realities of the Belarusian Crisis
Popular narrative tropes are not always accurate predictors of how a story will ultimately develop. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the former presidential hopeful and a person believed by many to have won...
Belarusian Crisis Through the Prism of Virtual Realities
At the December 2 virtual summit of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once again expressed his view that the protest movement in his country is...
No End in Sight for Belarusian Political Crisis
The turbulent stalemate in Minsk continues, despite the fact that street protests have been subsiding and their full-scale resumption is not expected before March, as noted by, among others, Belarusian...
Tragedy Boosts Belarusian Protests, Swift Denouement Unlikely
One of the most popular spots in Minsk today is a formerly unassuming space between a group of multi-story apartment blocks in the northern part of the city, some 600...
Lukashenka’s Legacy and the Damage to Public Trust
Despite widespread international condemnation of his handling of the 2020 election and subsequent crackdowns of mass protests, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus had nonetheless made some undeniable contributions to his...
The Belarusian Crisis and the Unenviable Fate of the Mediators
The political crisis in Belarus has reached either a stalemate or a crossroads that evades easy predictions as to where, when and how it will be resolved or alleviated. On...
Pompeo’s Call to Lukashenka and Aversion to Consensus-Building in Belarus
Following United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s Saturday (October 24) morning call to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Belta, October 24), the international dimension of the situation in Belarus has...
Bringing Belarus’s Political Crisis to Resolution Requires Realistic Image of Belarusian Society
“Moralizing About Coronavirus Policy Does Not Stop Coronavirus,” reads one August headline in Bloomberg. So can moralizing about the Belarusian crisis help bring about an agreeable solution? The European Union’s...
Belarusian Government Reckons With Two Months of Protests
Over nine weeks since the disputed Belarusian presidential election, and three weeks since President Alyaksandr Lukashenka held a secret inauguration ceremony, large street demonstrations in the country continue unabated. In...
Post-Lukashenka Belarus: Close Ties to Moscow but Improved Relationship With the West?
Arriving at some clarity regarding the situation in Belarus has become harder than ever before. An unstable equilibrium begets a cacophony of opinions that do not lend themselves to generalization...
Trying to See Into Belarus’s Near Future
Sunday, September 27, marked the 50th day of Belarusian protests against the falsified results of last month’s presidential election. Again, many participants of the rallies were arrested, tear-gassed and beaten...
Belarusian President Holds Surprise Inauguration
Today, September 23, Alyaksandr Lukashenka was officially inaugurated to his sixth consecutive term as president of Belarus. The ceremony took place at the Palace of Independence with about 700 guests...
The Alternative Realities Observed in the Belarusian Protests
In Belarus, protest rallies are continuing for the seventh straight week, as are the authorities’ selective arrests of protesters. But against this background, concerned actors and observers alike have been...
Belarusian Protests Through Emotional Versus Analytical Lenses
Narratives devoted to the ongoing political turmoil in Belarus fall into two basic categories: emotional and analytical. Attempts to mix both genres do not succeed. “Even if the Belarusian revolution...
Belarus at Moscow’s Mercy All Over Again
Alexei Dzermant is a Belarusian champion of closer amalgamation with Russia and the author of the upcoming book Belarus-Eurasia: Borderland of Europe and Russia. “There is one thing the white-red-whites...
Belarusian Elections: The Eve and the Aftermath
Sunday, August 9, was election day in Belarus. The official result: 80.8 percent for the incumbent, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and 10.09 percent for his main challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Six percent...
The Saga of the Russian Mercenaries in Belarus: Competing Narratives
The case of the 33 associates of the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, apprehended in a sanatorium (a cross between a recreational and a medical facility) in Zhdanovichi,...
Belarus: Elections and Sovereignty
With less than a fortnight to go before Belarus’s presidential elections on August 9, predictions remain uncertain. On the one hand, the incumbent President Alyaksandr Lukashenka will almost surely win—perhaps...
Belarusian Elections and Beyond
The ongoing presidential campaign in Belarus has been dominating news flows from that country so much that it is hard to believe anything else noteworthy could be happening. Yet, a...
A Peculiar Electoral Stalemate in Belarus
July 14 was the deadline for the registration of candidates in the 2020 Belarusian presidential election. In the meantime, the campaign has entered a baffling stage, whereby the electoral result...
Belarus’s Election Campaign: The Calm Before the Storm?
The end of June marked the beginning of a (likely brief) respite in Belarus’s presidential election campaign, but it may prove to be the lull before the storm. After the...
Belarusian Foreign Minister’s Suggestive Remarks Amidst Societal Tensions
Following an official event in Minsk, on June 26, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei gave an interview to opposition-minded...
The Political Situation Grows Tense in Minsk
Perhaps never has the flow of events in Minsk been as dynamic and captivating as at present. Moreover, available sources of information have dramatically diversified as online social networks and...
Is Belarus’s Presidential Campaign Running Aground?
The electoral campaign in Belarus is developing like the plot of a mystery novel. Two obstacles seem to stand in the way of its impartial description: the sheer number of...
Belarusian Elections and Geopolitical Somersaults
A joke has long been making the rounds in Belarus that the country has produced three times as many presidents of Israel as native-born presidents of Belarus itself. Amazingly, this...
Twists and Turns of Belarus’s Unusual Electoral Campaign
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka spoke with the workers of the Minsk Tractor Factory, on May 29 (ONT, Belta [1] [2], May 29). Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, Lukashenka stated, “I am...
Belarus’s Presidential Race Seemingly Heats Up
Considering how front and center and ever present the novel coronavirus pandemic has been for months on end, it is rather stunning how the start of the presidential race in...
Intrigue in Belarus’s Upcoming Presidential Election
Preparations for the presidential election in Belarus, scheduled for August 9, are now in full swing. May 15 was the deadline for the so-called initiative groups (IG), representing those willing...
Belarusian Victory Day Parade in Midst of Pandemic: A Propaganda Coup Against Moscow
In the evening of May 6, the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) deprived Alexei Kruchinin, a journalist from Russian TV’s First Channel, of accreditation, effectively sending him and his...
Belarusians Worry About the Economy
Belarus has been preoccupied in recent days with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s decision not to cancel this year’s annual May 9 Victory Day military parade, which marks arguably the country’s most...
A Dilution of Cement: Belarusian Civil Society, Local Leadership Take Initiative in COVID-19 Pandemic Response
By April 25, Belarus, a country of 9.5 million residents, had registered 9,590 people who had tested positive for COVID-19; 67 of those infected had died; 1,573 patients had recovered;...
Belarus Facing Risks of Unconsolidated Society
The Belarusian government’s decision to try to fight the COVID-19 pandemic without a nationwide quarantine dominated international coverage of this East European country for several weeks. And yet, that perhaps...
Belarus Fights COVID-19 and an Information War
On Friday, April 10, 1,793 patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection were kept in hospitals across Belarus (Sputnik.by, April 10); but by the following day, April 11, the number had already...
Belarus’s Contingency Plans and ‘Preexisting Conditions’
According to the Belarusian Ministry of Health (MH), as of April 4, 440 people had contracted the novel coronavirus responsible for causing COVID-19. That number included 41 recovered and 394...
Lukashenka Comes Under Widespread Fire for Lax COVID-19 Response
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has come under growing public pressure and international criticism for not undertaking the types of pervasive quarantine and mobility restriction policies to limit the spread of COVID-19...
Belarus’s Geopolitical Loneliness
The veil of uncertainty (see EDM, March 17) surrounding Belarus’s short- to medium-term socio-economic prospects continues to thicken. Alexander Chubrik, a reputable economist, writes about the Four Horsemen of the...
Belarus Navigates a Time of Uncertainty
“Utmost uncertainty” is perhaps the most fitting label summarizing the current situation in Belarus. Against the backdrop of a possible recession, international oil prices plummeted on March 9, in the...
Entering Buildings Through Back Doors: The Case of Belarus Policy
Following the forcible Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the value of boosting Belarus’s sovereignty began to outweigh the value of democracy promotion as the sole and unwavering basis of...
Economic Doldrums for Belarus, or a Possible End to the Price War With Russia?
The Belarusian economy has begun to sustain losses due to the disruption of Russian oil supplies. Whereas the country’s gross domestic product grew 1.2 percent in 2019 (annual growth), in...
Belarus Does Some Soul-Searching Amid Showdown With Russia
Oppressive silence followed the February 7 Russian-Belarusian summit in Sochi, Russia. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka left that North Caucasus resort city without making any public statement. However, it was clear that...
The Turning Point in Relations Between Moscow and Minsk?
As hard as it is to believe, given President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s long record of successfully wrenching concessions on energy prices from Moscow, Belarus’s relationship with Russia may finally be approaching...
Belarus: Stalemate With Russia and Rapprochement With the West
The stalemate in Belarusian-Russian negotiations over oil and natural gas continues. Following President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s emotional speech in the city of Shklov, in which he openly complained that Moscow was...
Can Belarus Ever Overcome the Pull of Russia?
On January 21, media outlets reported that Belarus had purchased 80,000 tons of crude oil from Norway (Tut.by, January 21, 2020). A Norwegian tanker delivered this oil to the Lithuanian...
Russia and Belarus Haggle over Oil and Gas Prices
The stalemate continues regarding Russia’s oil and natural gas prices for Belarus and the ensuing lack of long-term delivery contracts. No less newsworthy is the wide selection of opinions about...
A Year in Review: Increasingly Assertive Belarus Resists Foreign Domination
The top stories on Belarus from the past year collectively tended to feature four major interrelated refrains, listed in descending order of frequency: relations with Russia; the national character, including...
Split Identity and a Tug-of-War for Belarus’s Memory
Executive Summary World War II continues to be at the center of Belarusians’ collective memory. However, Belarus is a country with two historical narratives that have been at odds with...
Belarus-Russia Integration Summit Ends With no Signature
As the December 8 deadline to sign the so-called roadmaps for further Russian-Belarusian integration drew closer, anxiety reached a fever pitch among politicized Belarusians. On Friday, December 6, Prime Ministers...
Parliamentary Elections in Belarus: Stability Over Improvement
Belarus held parliamentary elections on November 17, resulting in a near-complete turnover of the legislature. Only 30 lawmakers from the previous convocation have retained their seats. The official turnout was...
Vladimir Makei: Belarus Wants to Become East European Switzerland
As spirited debates over Russia-Belarus integration rage on, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka traveled to Vienna. Considering that the sanctions the European Union had imposed on Belarus in 2006 were only...
Belarusian History and the Politics of Memory
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s October 20 interview, in which he referred to three wars that raged in Belarus as “not our wars,” continues to reverberate in both Russian and Belarusian media...
Testing Belarus’s Character From Inside and Out
A battalion of United States military forces has arrived at a training area in Pabrade, Lithuania, 15 kilometers from the Belarusian border. The 1st Armored Battalion of the 9th Regiment...
The Factors Driving Change in Belarus’s International Relations
Perhaps for only the second time ever, sharper criticism of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been emanating from Russia than from his domestic opposition. A somewhat similar situation took place...
Belarusian Expert Yauheni Preiherman Shares His Views on European Security Matters With Opposition Media
Yauheni Preiherman gave an extensive interview to Nasha Niva, an outlet catering to Belarusian Westernizing nationalists (Nasha Niva, October 16). Unlike the Warsaw-based Charter97 and Belsat, which tend to fervidly...
Foreign Minister Makei Gives Long Interview to Belarusian Opposition Media Outlets
Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei gave an interview to several non-state news organizations, including Tut.by, Euroradio, Nasha Niva and the Belarusian Service of Radio Liberty (Tut.by, October 17). During the...
At Second Minsk Dialogue Forum, Belarus Seeks to Redefine Its Reputation
This year’s (October 7–8) Minsk Dialogue forum, entitled, “European Security: Stepping Back from the Brink,” attracted over 700 participants from Europe, Russia, the United States, Belarus and China (Minskdialogue.by, October...
Belarus-Russia Integration: One More Wrangling Match
Belarus remains at the center of a geopolitically tinged maelstrom of emotions enveloping the country. And in recent weeks, that maelstrom was simultaneously fed by Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei’s...
Belarus’s President Lukashenka Talks to Ukrainian Journalists
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a press conference for Ukrainian journalists in Minsk, on September 26. Compared to Lukashenka’s more regular face-to-face contacts with the Russian media, the scale of this...
Passions Over Integration with Russia and Elections in Belarus
While some seven or eight years ago newsworthy events pertaining to Belarus were considered rare, today they are so abundant it is difficult to choose which to focus on. Just...
What Drives Belarus’s Rapprochement With the West?
The sudden sacking of United States National Security Advisor John Bolton just days after he returned from his high-profile visit to the Belarusian capital tempted some observers to try to...
Lukashenka, Bolton and Russia’s Double-Headed Eagle
United States National Security Advisor John Bolton’s visit to Minsk was preceded, accompanied and followed by an unprecedented number of commentaries in Belarus and Russia. For the most part, however,...
Belarus’s Sovereignty Upswing
Several developments suggest Belarus is entering a new phase of its evolution as a sovereign country. First, the state-owned Belarusian Oil Company has hired the American lobbyist David Gencarelli to...
Country in Focus: Perspectives of Belarus’s Neighbors
A bewildering array of divergent opinions on Belarus emanates from its closest neighbors. But for a relatively small and landlocked country committed to retaining and developing its statehood, it is...
State-Building Around a Nebulous Nation: The Legacy of Belarus’s President Lukashenka
Whenever Belarus’s vulnerability to Russian expansionism is discussed today, two points are raised most frequently: a) Vladimir Putin may be looking to extend his tenure in power beyond 2024 by...
Belarus-Russia Integration: Further Tightening Looks Unlikely
On July 17, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for the fifth time since the beginning of 2019. Earlier this year, they spoke in Minsk,...
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Lukashenka’s Presidency in Belarus
July 20, 2019, marks the 25th anniversary of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule. Unlike most post-Soviet national leaders, he had no background in the Soviet nomenklatura, rising to the helm...
What Does a Return to Realism in International Relations Mean for Belarus?
More than a year ago, the Russian “patriotic” newspaper Vzglyad shared a “discovery” extracted from a cross-tabulation of two public opinion surveys. One of them was by the French polling...
Belarus Celebrates Independence Day Amid Stress of Integration Talks With Russia
On July 3, Belarus celebrated its Independence Day. Belarus is the only post-Soviet country whose major national holiday is an anniversary of the liberation of its capital city from Nazi...
Belarus-Russia Integration: No Decision Yet
Despite official declarations to the contrary, June 21 passed by with no joint memorandum on deeper political-economic integration between Belarus and Russia. And while government-linked media outlets in Russia evince...
Belarus: Standing out From the Post-Soviet Crowd
Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia’s premier political commentator and the chair of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, recently wrote an article titled, “Former [Soviet] Union Republics Enter New Development Phase....
Two Responses to Fears of Belarus’s Integration Into Russia
Belarus’s location between Russia and the collective West is not a consequence of political considerations—it is a fact of geography. Likewise, the cultural proximity between Belarusians and Russians represents another...
Realism and Positive Thinking, Belarusian Style
Two texts on issues of existential importance for Belarus appeared at the end of May. The author of the first is Sergei Lepin, an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church’s...
The Three Russian Attitudes Toward Belarus
Russians are not unanimous in their attitude toward Belarus. According to popular Belarusian online portal Tut.by’s Artyom Shraibman, politically influential Russians fall into three camps: Technocrats-Monetarists (e.g., Prime Minister Dmitry...
Debating Belarus, A Country In-Between
“Getting Out From ‘In-Between’ ” was the suggestive title of a 2018 RAND Corporation study devoted to the former Soviet republics that became members of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP)...
Belarus Celebrates Victory Day Amidst Conflicting Interpretations
On May 9, Belarus held its annual Victory Day commemoration, marking the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945. As part of the ceremonies, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka laid...
Analyzing Belarus: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
On May 1, a Holocaust Remembrance event at the US Department of State focused on the history of the Minsk Ghetto, one of the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe. Most of...
Lukashenka’s Trip to China, New Complications in Belarusian-Russian Relations, and the Fallacy of Symmetric Thinking
On April 25–27, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to China to participate in the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, devoted to the Chinese government’s continental...
Belarus Builds Relations With Turkey as Russian Ambassador to Minsk Comes Under Fire
Last week, Belarus’s President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visited Turkey (April 16) and, three days later, delivered his annual report to the parliament and the Belarusian people (April 19). Following negotiations with...
Upsurge of Political Passions in Belarus Ahead of Energy Talks With Russia
Belarus’s relations with Russia, the country’s most powerful neighbor and donor, have markedly deteriorated in recent weeks. On the surface, nothing seems to be further complicating the Belarusian-Russian relationship, beyond...
One More Standoff in Kuropaty: Slow-Motion Social ‘Civil War’ Rages on in Belarus
While it was tempting to label national consolidation in Belarus a growing trend (see EDM, April 4), the events of early April 2019 collectively suggest this qualification could have been...
Stitching up the Belarus Archipelago
Recently the Belarusian service of Deutsche Welle (DW) published an article entitled, “The Belarus Archipelago: How to Overcome the Divide in Belarusian Society?” which presents a roundup of opinions of...
Difficulties of Belarusian National Consolidation in International and Domestic Setting
While Belarus’s self-awareness is generally on the rise (see EDM, March 19), it never stops being influenced by a wide spectrum of domestic and international affairs. Thus, a tussle between...
Words Matter: Belarus’s Self-Awareness on the Rise
Words matter. If only because they have the power to nudge an individual to see things from a wholly new angle. In that regard, the exchange between Mikhail Babich, Russia’s...
President Lukashenka’s Rhetoric and Belarus’s Future
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s seven-hour marathon with reporters, on March 1 (see EDM, March 7), continues to reverberate in the media. Most of the discussions fall within one of four discernible...
Lukashenka’s Seven-Hour Marathon With Reporters
On March 1, for seven hours, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka fielded questions from journalists and political commentators (President.gov.by, March 1). Relations with Russia were the major refrain of the entire...
Cautious Optimism in Belarus’s Growing Geopolitical Leverage
In a February 20 interview for a Ukrainian media outlet, former secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Anders Fogh Rasmussen predicted that unless Belarus launches “reforms leading...
Belarusian Diplomacy and Leadership: Notable Activity on All Flanks
Recently, presidents Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin spent three days (February 13–15) together in Sochi, Russia. As a result, Lukashenka sacrificed his previously planned trip to the Munich Security Conference....
Beyond Lies: A New Stage in the Belarus-Russia Information War
On February 13, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, met for the fourth time over the course of two months (President.gov.by, February 13; Belta, February...
Alleviating Tensions Between Russia and Belarus: Two Paradigms
Those taking a stand on Russian-Belarusian tensions around the so-called oil tax maneuver (see EDM, October 1, 2018; December 12, 2018; January 14, 15, 2019) fall into two main categories:...
In Belarus, Pseudo-Events are Events, Too—Maybe Even More So
Russian-Belarusian tensions are still a major topic of discussion in the Belarusian media. Artyom Shraibman of Tut.by, notably predicts that neither side will yield to the other; therefore, Belarus will...
Belarus-Russia Tensions: Any Alternative to Hype?
Like smoke with little fire, there has been a lot of anxiety surrounding the current Belarusian-Russian tensions (see EDM, January 15, 2019). Prolonged agitation, however, clouds judgment. At the end...
Belarus’s Sovereignty and Russia’s Brotherly Embrace
In just the month of December 2018, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus met three times: in St. Petersburg on the 6th (see EDM, December 12,...
New Public Demarche by Lukashenka
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka took part in the summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 6. During the televised segment of the meeting, Lukashenka...
Belarus and Its Neighbors: Ups and Downs in Relations
For four days, Minsk did not officially comment on last month’s (November 25) Russian-Ukrainian naval conflagration that occurred around the Kerch Strait. “The situation is so explosive,” opined Valer Karbalevich...
Russian Media Reacts to Americans Visiting Minsk
“To say that the Russian media has been alarmed by the [recent] visitors to Minsk would be an understatement,” writes the online newspaper Ukraina.ru (Ukraine.ru, November 12), alluding to the...
Lukashenka Meets American Analysts
On November 5–6, a group of high-profile foreign policy analysts from the United States visited Minsk and met with Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The guests included retired General Benjamin Hodges,...
Belarus Undergoing Serious Reassessment by US, Europe
If public statements recently made in and about Belarus were to be ranked in descending order of significance, the October 31 remarks by A. Wess Mitchell, US Assistant Secretary of...
The Belarusian Language and the Question of National Identity: What Link?
Three habitual criticisms have long been leveled at Belarus: It is too authoritarian, too close to Russia, and both ills stem from over two decades of uninterrupted rule by President...
Autocephaly of Ukrainian Orthodox Church Spotlights Belarus’s Growing Geopolitical Importance
Belarusian-Russian relations were marked by two major events in recent weeks: the October 12 bilateral summit in the Belarusian city of Mogilev (see EDM, October 16) as well as the...
Belarus Finds Itself Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The putative detachment of Belarus from Russia as well as a twin topic, the supposed annexation of Belarus by Russia, are never-ending refrains in both countries’ media. The former is...
Belarus Asserting Its Own Voice at Home and Abroad
News that the United States is weighing the possibility of establishing a permanent military base in Poland as well as Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei’s speech at the United Nations...
Belarus Navigates Rough Waters
One of the dangers of traveling in a small ship is the possibility of forceful swaying in rough waters. Belarus is a small ship, and it is supersensitive to the...
Belarus Receives Alarming Signals From Both East and West
Belarus has never lacked for individuals benefiting from either Eastern or Western support. Their actions, however, often left Belarusians disappointed. September 17 marked the 79th anniversary of the unification of...
New Controversial Publications About Belarus
Three important books on Belarus released in the past two years shed new light on the complex debates over Belarusian identity. First, Alexander Nosovich, a political scientist with Belarusian roots...
Belarus Caught in Diplomatic Spat With France, Row Over Oil Duties With Russia
In late August, the Ukrainian magazine Tizhden published excerpts from a book by the former president of France, François Hollande, Les Leçons de Pouvoir (The Lessons of Power). The passages...
Making Sense of News Coming out of Belarus
Because interpreting news from Belarus has been challenging for outsiders, some verifiable background information about the country may prove useful. For example, for the eighth straight year, the former “last...
Fake News and Speculation Assaults Belarus
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka canceled his planned trip to the city of Gomel and did not appear on TV for three days prior to July 30. This sudden absence encouraged...
Belarus Opening up to the World Amidst Russian Accusations of Disloyalty
On July 24, the Belarusian government significantly increased the length of time that visitors from a list of 80 foreign countries could remain in Belarus visa-free. The period was extended...
Twenty-Four Years of Lukashenka’s Rule: What Awaits Belarus in the Future?
July 10 marked the 24th anniversary of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s tenure as the president of Belarus. Numerous publications reviewed the dynamics of the country’s basic indicators over that period and reflected...
Belarus: Enforcing the Law in an Illiberal Democracy
Three sets of law enforcement actions recently administered in Belarus help to shed light on what rule of law means in this country. Thus, on July 4, Alexander Knyrovich, the...
Belarus Celebrates Independence While Rejecting Having to Choose Between East and West
Three implicitly interrelated events eclipsed all other developments in Belarus over the course of the past two weeks: Belarus’s Independence Day (July 3); the inauguration of the Maly Trostenets memorial...
Russia’s Entire Leadership Team Visits Minsk
A team of top-level Russian guests, including President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the heads of both chambers of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matvienko (Federation Council) and Viacheslav...
Showdown in Belarus’s Kuropaty Forest
Kuropaty, a patch of forest adjacent to the Minsk beltway, has been the venue of daily public protests against a newly commissioned restaurant since May 31. The land was the...
Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant Proceeding Full Speed Ahead
Every year, on April 26, the Belarusian opposition organizes a “Chernobyl Path Rally” (CPR), devoted to commemorating the 1986 nuclear power plant disaster, which ultimately deposited 70 percent of its...
Clichés Clashing With Real Life in Belarus
In many ways, contemporary Belarus bears less and less resemblance to the persistent but worn narratives about this country. And three choice developments from the past several weeks illustrate this...
Successful International Security Gathering in Belarus Brings Together East and West
In his May 24 speech at the Minsk Dialogue forum, “Eastern Europe: In Search of Security for All,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka reminded that Belarus came forward with the initiative to...
Belarusians Take Their Country’s Fate Into Their Own Hands
The death of Richard Pipes, one of the United States’ foremost Russian scholars, generated quite a resonance in the Russian media. Some honored him as a respected enemy (Zavtra, May...
‘Victory Day’ and Social Cohesion in Belarus: Debates Over False Choices
The former Soviet Union accounts for at least one-third of the total death toll of over 60 million in World War II. Thus, particularly for the numerous families who lost...
Fine-Tuned Gaffes and Casual Mirror Reflections as Windows Into the Belarusian Character
Alyaksandr Lukashenka loves to deviate from a script when delivering a speech. His rhetoric frequently includes what might be termed “gaffes,” some genuine while others seemingly more calculated—a form of...
Lukashenka Addresses Nation, Criticizes Both West and Russia
On April 24, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his annual state-of-the-country address (Belarus Segodnya, April 25). A flamboyant public speaker, this time he set a somewhat calmer tone and delivered a...
Public Intellectuals Muse about Belarus and Russia
Two informative interviews on issues related to Belarus were published in mid-April. Given by Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs and the chairman of the non-governmental organization...
From Kaiser to Lenin: Old-Time Labels and Slogans Reverberating in Today’s Belarus
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka held a press conference, on April 10, for Belarusian state-run media (Belta, April 10). Among the topics broached were the idea of changes to the constitution, the...
Belarus’s Freedom Day: Post-Celebration Anxieties
The March 25 centennial celebration of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) has triggered multiple anxieties and is still reverberating emotionally in the Belarusian media and across online social networks. Somewhat...
Belarus Freedom Day Celebration in a Geopolitical Context
On March 25, the celebration of the centennial of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) (see EDM, January 25), which opposition-minded Belarusians have long christened “Freedom Day,” proceeded as planned. An...
Preconceived Notions Obscure Signs of National Consolidation in Belarus
Three Belarusian opposition activists, including 2010 presidential hopeful Vladimir Neklyaev, were preventively arrested in Minsk, on March 21, while walking on the street. At least one of them received a...
Nation-Building Picking up Pace in Belarus
A memorial to the Lutskevich brothers was installed, on March 13, in downtown Minsk. It consists of a large engraved stone commemorating two houses where, in 1896–1906, Anton and Ivan...
Between Traditional and Modern: The Fortunes of the Belarusian Economy
In late February, Tom Post, editorial advisor at the Finnish and Baltic edition of Forbes, and Arkady Shteimans, referred to as the publisher of Forbes in Latvia, Estonia and Finland,...
Belarus: Time to Collect Stones
The Minsk city administration allowed the opposition-based Organizing Committee (OC) of the centennial celebration of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) (see EDM, January 25) to organize a meeting and a...
Belarus: National Cohesion and Political Culture
If there is a common refrain to be found in the continual stream of ostensibly disparate but newsworthy developments related to Belarus, it is the country’s lingering quest for national...
Belarus: The Art of Keeping a Distance
“The world is one step from a global confrontation with unpredictable consequences,” declared President Alyaksandr Lukashenka at the meeting of Belarus’s Security Council. “Whereas Russia will bear the brunt of...
Pragmatics and Zealots of Belarus
Belarus’s Ministry of Culture has allowed the airing of Armando Iannucci’s comedic movie The Death of Stalin (Tut.by, February 5), earlier banned in Russia. Predictably, Russian ultra-patriots called this decision...
Belarus Repels Challenges to Stability and Sovereignty
The passing of Gene Sharp, the author of the influential 1973 book The Politics of Nonviolent Action, did not go unnoticed across the post-Soviet space. A sampling of headlines in...
Minsk Finds Itself in Diplomatic Tug-of-War With Astana
During Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s meeting in Washington with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on January 16, a suggestion reportedly came up to transfer the venue of talks and negotiations...
Belarus: Paradoxes of National Memory and Freedom of Speech
The Belarusian opposition is looking forward to the centennial of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR). Proclaimed by a group of nationalist activists on March 25, 1918, this entity existed until...
A Year in Review: Belarus Pursues Greater National Consolidation
Belarus experienced multiple ups and downs during 2017, but has emerged with its sovereignty intact and in many ways increasing freedom of action on the international stage. The country overcame...
Belarus Moves Slowly Toward More Positive Relationship With Europe
In an October 2017 interview on Lenta.ru, a mainstream Russian online news portal, prominent historian Sergei Volkov was pointedly asked, “Why is it that neighbors and allies of Russia continue...
Belarus and Russia Keep a Vigilant Eye on Each Other
With its “wife abandonment syndrome” (see EDM, December 5, 2016) fostered by the geopolitical reorientation of former satellites, Russia is prone to suspect latent infidelity on the part of Belarus,...
Belarus in a Love Triangle With Russia and the West?
Belarus openly admits to pursuing a multi-directional foreign policy. And Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei has made multiple statements about the difficulties of balancing between East and West under growing tensions...
Belarus and the West: A Thorough Reassessment Underway
Contrary to expectations, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka ignored a personal invitation to participate in the November 24 Brussels summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) and sent his foreign...
Belarus: Generational Change and Nation-Building
“We [in Belarus] have a genre [best described as] complaint songs. We love to take pity on ourselves and to cry out for compassion,” noted Igar Marzalyuk, who heads the...
Belarus and the 1917 Revolution
“In Russia, at the centennial of the 1917 revolution, they talk so little about it that some people abroad developed a sneaking suspicion this jubilee is kept out of sight...
Belarus, Russia and the ‘Ukrainian Scenario’
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has never been our genuine friend, declares the Russian media outlet EurAsia Daily. According to an article there by Kirill Nemiga, in the early 1990s Lukashenka...
Belarus Demonstrates Resilience
Newsworthy material from and about Belarus tends to either concentrate on Belarus’s relations with Russia, relations with the European Union or on domestic issues, including the economy. When it comes...
The Tragic Case of Alexander Korzhych Highlights Problem of Hazing in Belarusian Military
On October 3, Alexander Korzhych, a 21-year-old conscript, was found dead in the basement of his military unit, located in Borisov, a city in the Minsk region of Belarus. Korzhych...
Lukashenka Receives an Invitation to Brussels
In a dramatic reversal from years of earlier policy precedent, on October 6, Brussels extended an invitation to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus to participate in the November 25 summit...
What Are the Limits to Belarus’s Sovereignty?
The joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad 2017 war games, which ran during September 14–20, inspired a wide-ranging debate about the nature and geopolitical realities of Belarusian statehood and independence. Thus, according to...
Belarus Shows Three Important Signs of Change
Nothing is eternal under the moon. Indeed, Belarusian attitudes toward Russia, the country’s meaningful other, are visibly shifting. Similarly, international opinions of Belarus’s national leader are currently exhibiting signs of...
Belarusian Economy: Challenges and Gains
In the first half of 2017, Belarus’s economy finally overcame its 2.5-year-long downward trend (EurasiaExpert, August 31). Thus, Belarus’s gross domestic product (GDP) has increased 1 percent compared with the...
Belarus’s Goodwill Capital
Undeniably, Belarus and Russia are culturally close. In and of itself, this closeness is no liability except for its lopsidedness. Russia’s pervasive sway in every critical aspect of Belarusian life,...
The Most Talked About Stories Coming out of Belarus
Not only beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the absence of attention-grabbing cataclysms, the most talked about issue related to Belarus depends on who you ask. Thus,...
Emotions Simmer in an Ostensibly Emotionless Land
Two developments have been dominating discussions in Belarus in recent weeks. The first of these took place in Grosseto, Italy. On July 21, Violetta Skvortsova of Belarus won the triple...
Belarus Gains New Friends, While Lukashenka Retains His Popularity Region-Wide
Minsk is winning over Belarus’s neighbors. “We have stabilized our relations with Belarus… Today, there is no ideological war between our countries,” declared Witold Waszczykowski, the Polish minister of foreign...
Toward a More Belarusian Belarus
Belarus’s independent voice is growing louder. On June 27, the Belarusian embassy to the United States organized a reception on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between...
Svetlana Alexievich’s Third Try
Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, gave a speech, on June 27, in Brussels, at the European People’s Party Group’s hearing “Belarusian society: towards a modern political...
Scandal Plagues Belarus’s Nobel Prize Laureate
No sooner had the uproar caused by Svetlana Alexievich’s pronouncement about Belarusian Catholics (see EDM, June 15) calmed down, than a new scandal broke. Now, Russians are the offended party....
With Radical Voices Increasingly Shut out of the Debate, Belarusian Analysts Opine About the Future
It is worth noting that, in recent months, two segments of the Belarusian analytical community—zealously Russia-oriented commentators on the one hand, and the radical Westernizing opposition on the other—have conspicuously...
Words Matter: Belarus and Its Western Neighbors
“Not merely tanks and weapons can kill, words can too,” wrote archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the leader of Belarusian Catholics, in his resentful letter to Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize...
Belarus’s Quest for Self-Identity Aided by Outside Actors
Belarus has been formally independent since December 1991; but as Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei averred two years ago, in an interview with The Washington Post, “We have not yet arrived...
Belarusian Foreign Policy: In Search of Economic Growth Opportunities
After the liquidation of the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS—see EDM, September 7, 2016), no polling agency, state-run or independent, has conducted and published regular national surveys....
Belarus: Sitting on Two Chairs Is What the Doctor Ordered
Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Kravchenko visited Washington and held meetings at the US State Department and the Senate. He also participated in the May 9 roundtable discussion “Between East...
Realists Winning Tug of War Over Belarus
After the crackdown on the March 25 rally in Minsk, the main Belarusian daily Belarus Segodnya published an extensive report devoted to the White Legion, a group of young vigilantes...
Popular Myths About the Belarusian Economy
Stereotypes reduce the complexity of the world into a few simple guidelines, which can enter everyday thoughts and decisions. For years, Belarus has been repeatedly labeled “Europe’s last dictatorship,” thus...
In Belarus, Rhetoric Not All That Matters
Since April 18, the news in Minsk has been preoccupied with how an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Directorate for Combating Organized Crime stole $269,150 in cash from...
Breaking out of the West’s Conditioned Response to Belarus ‘Failing the Democracy Test’
The consequences of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s April 3 meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as well as the March 25 crackdown on the Freedom Day rally in Minsk...
Even Under Pressure, Belarus Defies Clichés
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s April 3 meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, in St. Petersburg, seems to have finally resolved the drawn-out (since January 2016) argument between the two...
Crackdown in Minsk: End of Latest Belarusian Political Thaw?
On March 25, riot police in Minsk apprehended over 700 people taking part in downtown rallies devoted to “Freedom Day” (Tut.by, March 26), which this year marked the 99th anniversary...
Belarus: Public Protests in the Geopolitical Context
Predicting that Belarusian authorities would begin apprehending the most active participants of the continuing rallies against the decree on social parasites was like pushing at an open door. While first...
Belarus Policies and Their Existential Jetlag
Belarusians continue to protest the presidential decree on social parasites (DSP). Already, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has backed off, if only in part. Short of abandoning the infamous decree altogether, he...
Belarus in a Frenzy Over Allegations of Potential Russian Aggression
Even during periods of relative calm, interpreting the range of opinions regarding the domestic situation in Belarus requires a no-nonsense immersion in the country’s political landscape, formative experience and an...
Belarus: Time of Trouble Lingers
Belarus’s standoff with Russia over natural gas prices and the corresponding arrears continues. And so does Russia’s ensuing punishment of Belarus by way of cutting back on duty-free oil. Meanwhile,...
Turmoil in and Around Belarus
Belarus’s legendary calm was shattered by three momentous disruptions in recent days. First, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka surprisingly agreed to a two-hour meeting with Iosif Seredich, the editor-in-chief of the major...
Belarus-Russian Conflict Still Raging
The conflict between Russia and Belarus reached a high water mark in the scandalous pronouncements of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to the press earlier this month (see EDM, February 6). And...
Lukashenka’s Eccentric Conversation With Russia and the World
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka held a record-long press conference for the Belarusian press corps, on Friday, February 3 (TV.rain.ru, YouTube, February 3). It lasted 7 hours and 20 minutes. Lukashenka’s central...
Belarus: Expanding the Scope of the Permissible
Minsk continues to drift away from Moscow. Among the most recent indications of this trend was President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s remark about “wars for independence” during his meeting with university professors....
Is Russia Readying to Conduct Regime Change in Belarus?
Belarus’s already strained relations with Russia have recently deteriorated even further. Several new indications add to the previously compiled list (see EDM, January 18, 20). First, during a January 18...
Visa-Free Travel to Belarus and the Dawn of a New Era in the (Dis)Information Wars
Minsk has introduced visa-free regulations for entering Belarus for no more than five days, if arriving via Minsk National Airport, for citizens of 80 states. The decree applies to all...
Soviet Breakup and the Ongoing Fight for Belarusian Identity
December 8 marked the 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The document that did away with the USSR was signed by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and...
Wife Abandonment Syndrome: Russia’s Concern About Being Betrayed by Belarus
On November 22, Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian documentary filmmaker and a TV talk show host, made a public appearance at the Palace of the Republic in Minsk. Immediately before the...
Belarus and Ukraine Face Strained Relations
On October 21, a regular Kyiv–Minsk flight by a Belavia (Belarusian state carrier) Boeing 737−800 passenger jet was interrupted. At 3:36 p.m., Ukrainian air traffic control demanded that the airliner,...
US Elections and Economic Concerns Dominate Internal Debates in Belarus
The United States’ presidential election elicited genuine interest in Belarus. On November 8, at 7:30 PM Minsk time, while voting was still in its early phase, the US embassy held...
Belarus Balances Pursuit of Economic Growth With Strengthening National Identity
On Belarus’s eastern flank, the conflict with Russia over natural gas prices has reportedly been resolved; but the parameters of the resolution are not transparent. In the words of Belarusian...
Strategic Assessment: Belarus Weathers Economic Doldrums as Rapprochement With West Proceeds
The following political landscape piece is a part of Eurasia Daily Monitor’s special quarterly series of strategic assessments of developments across Eurasia. These pieces examine recent important developments and trends...
Belarus the Object of Two Peculiar Tugs of War
Although Belarus has resolved its argument with Russia about the price of natural gas, the parameters of this resolution are still subject to different interpretations. The two sides have apparently...
Belarus Charts Course Between Russia and Poland
The nine-month-long argument about the price of Russian natural gas for Belarus has finally been resolved—for now. Belarus will compensate Russia for underpayment from January 1 to July 1, 2016...
Can Belarus Overcome Its Economic Doldrums?
Facing a stalemate in its negotiations with Russia, Belarus unilaterally increased by 50 percent its tariff on the transit of Russian crude oil beginning on October 11. This is clearly...
Belarus Suffers Economic Woes While Projecting Inner Tranquility
Belarus’s current economic situation is a cause for concern. The decline in GDP by the end of 2016 will amount to 3 percent. Between January and August, the country led...
Belarus and Russia Experience New Bout of Tensions
In recent years, there has been no shortage of bad blood between Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the Russian Kremlin. For example, in February 2004, Lukashenka referred to the stoppage...
Belarusians Debate Parliamentary Elections
Political commentators continue to discuss the outcomes of Belarus’s September 11 parliamentary elections (see EDM, September 12). According to the official results, the lowest voter turnout was in the city...
Belarusians Elect Their House of Representatives
Belarus held parliamentary elections on Sunday, September 11. Two opposition-minded candidates have been elected to the Belarusian legislature’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives: Anna Konopatskaya from the United Civic...
Killing the Messenger: The Demise of a Reliable Belarusian Pollster
Dedicated Belarus watchers are almost certainly bemoaning the recent termination of a reputable non-state polling firm, the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS) (Belapan, August 9). Founded in...
Possible Nuclear Power Plant Accident in Belarus Sheds Light on Minsk’s Internal Political Process
The Belarusian Ministry of Energy confirmed, on July 26, that an emergency situation occurred earlier that month at the construction site of the Belarusian nuclear power plant (NPP) (Energobelarus.by, July...
Belarus and the Murder of Pavel Sheremet
Pavel Sheremet (born in 1971), one of the most well-known Belarusian journalists, was killed on July 20, in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, where he was working for the last five years...
Belarus: Change Is in the Offing
The evolving political dynamics of Belarus are causing an unprecedented shift in policy stances and viewpoints that were heretofore considered immovable. Thus, some of the opinions that used to be...
Minsk Props up Currency, Diversifies Foreign Policy
The Belarusian ruble was re-denominated on July 1. Over the next six months, the banknotes in circulation will be replaced with new banknotes and coins in proportion of 10,000 old...
Belarusians Debate Their Development Path
The Fifth All-Belarusian People’s Assembly (ABPA) opened in Minsk, on June 22. The two-day gathering brought together 2,500 delegates representing managers from all levels of power along with publicly acclaimed...
Belarus’s Problems and the Heavy-Handed Conduct of Outside Powers
The Belarusian government responded in a rather conciliatory manner to the decision by President Barack Obama to extend by one more year the United States’ travel sanctions on a number...
The Belarusian Opposition’s Imaginary World and Its Protracted Dispute With Reality
Leaders of the Belarusian opposition took part, on May 23, in the Brussels-based meeting of the European Parliament’s (EP) Committee on Foreign Affairs. All of them but Tatyana Korotkevich, the...
Will the Opposition Gain Seats in the Belarusian Parliament, and Is That Still Relevant?
The European Union and the United States are intensifying their appeals on Minsk to ensure transparency and democratic standards during the parliamentary elections scheduled for September 11. Deputy Assistant Secretaries...
The Declining Fortunes of the Current Belarusian Opposition
Five and a half years after the 2010 presidential elections, which culminated in street protests, violence, police crackdowns and Western sanctions on Belarus, the intensity of both official and unofficial...
Belarus Reforms Its Elections and Commemorates Chernobyl
Western organizations tend to use a single set of criteria to evaluate the electoral processes and the sundry aspects of the democracy and human rights situations in various non-Western countries....
Lukashenka’s Report to the Nation: Rhetoric Versus Reality
On April 21, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his annual “report to the Belarusian people and the National Assembly [parliament].” When speaking about the economy, Lukashenka did not use the words...
Lukashenka in Turkey: Establishing Economic Ties
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka paid a visit to Turkey, last week, in conjunction with the April 14–15 Istanbul meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Founded in 1969, the...
Peculiarities of Public Opinion in Belarus
The new (March) quarterly survey by the Western-funded Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS)—a polling firm widely considered by Western experts to be the most reputable such organization...
Belarus Goes Against the Tide
In the past week, two notable events sparked heated debate in the Belarusian and Russian press: the dispensation to Belarus of a Russian $2 billion loan and a visit to...
Freedom Day and Belarus’s Ongoing Quest for Identity
On March 25, opposition-minded Belarusians celebrated Freedom Day (Dzen Voli). On that day, in 1918, the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) was proclaimed in Minsk, under German military occupation. The quasi-state...
Arrest of an ‘Oligarch’ in Belarus
On March 11, Yury Chyzh, one of Belarus’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, was arrested. Chyzh heads Triple, a conglomerate with 5,000 employees and assets in various businesses, including the oil trade, construction,...
Belarus: Economic Woes and the Fate of Gloomy Predictions
In January 2016, Belarus’s gross domestic product (GDP) was 4.3 percent lower than in January 2015 (Infofocus, February 2016). Since refined oil accounts for one-third of Belarusian exports, the steep...
Belarus: 19th Century Geopolitics Lives On
In January 2009, that is, during the previous (2008–2010) thaw between Belarus and the West, the International Monetary Fund set up a line of credit for Minsk worth $2.46 billion...
Why Sanctions Against Belarus Could Not Stand
The removal of the sanctions on Belarus by the European Union continues to be one of the most debated topics in the Belarusian media. The most meaningful piece about sanctions,...
The European Union Lifts Its Sanctions Against Belarus
Just days before the European Union Foreign Affairs Council’s resolution to lift the sanctions imposed on Belarus in the aftermath of the December 2010 presidential elections, the Belarusian media were...
Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good: The Case of Belarus
On February 1, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Sochi. The meeting was not planned in advance: Lukashenka had reportedly only called his Russian counterpart...
Belarus and Its Powerful Neighbors: A Master Class of Raw Geopolitics
As January 2016 drew to a close, news pertaining to Belarus’s relations with its two large neighbors—Russia and Europe—again overshadowed any developments emanating from the Eastern European country itself. First,...
Mistreating a Journalist, and a Russian Attempt to Court the Belarusian Opposition
Since January 25, politically active Belarusians have been debating a violent incident involving Pavel Dobrovolsky, a correspondent of Tut.by, Belarus’s leading private news portal, who was allegedly beaten up by...
Belarus and the West: A Policy Change Long Overdue
Two recent public opinion polls have highlighted quite revealing results about populations living in Belarus and Ukraine. First, according to the Ukrainian polling firm Rating, the opinions of Ukrainians about...
The Limits of Geopolitical Thinking on Belarus
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visit to Moscow, which had been scheduled for November 25–26 and then postponed, eventually occurred on December 15. By most accounts, the contentious issues facing Lukashenka and...
Belarus’ Nobel Prize Winner and Her Country Defy Clichés
On December 7, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, gave her Nobel lecture in Stockholm (Naviny.by, December 7). The lecture was delivered in...
Tensions on the Rise between Belarus and Russia
After several weeks of ostensible silence, discussions over a potential Russian airbase in Belarus have taken on new vigor. As early as September, President Vladimir Putin of Russia asked his...
Belarus Navigates a Multipolar World
The bombshell of late November was the postponement of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visit to Moscow, where he was supposed to have met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The...
Belarusian Analysts Debate Implications of Paris Attacks
Two foremost Belarusian opposition-minded political analysts, Yury Drakakhrust of Radio Liberty and Tut.by along with Alexander Klaskovsky of Belarus’s non-state press agency BelaPan, recently published thought-provoking articles about the potential...
Belarus and Published Opinion-Making
In early November, journalists and analysts convened in Tallinn, Estonia, for the fifth annual meeting of the “Rubicon” conference fully devoted to issues pertaining to Belarus. This year, the major...
West Revises Its Belarus Policies, as Belarusian Opposition Reacts
The West’s major centers of power—the European Union and the United States—have recently announced significant adjustments to their Belarus policies; and the underpinnings and implications of those changes are now...
Belarus Redoubles Efforts to Connect With the World
While the outcome of this past month’s presidential elections in Belarus continues to be discussed, the major news refrains have become the debate on a Russian airbase in Belarus, rapprochement...
Alleged Vote Rigging in Belarus and Paralysis of the Opposition
Belarus’s presidential election (held on October 11) appear to have generated two main responses. First, opposition-minded commentators practically unanimously opine that although the incumbent, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, could have won...
Two Disparate Newsmakers Push Belarus to Forefront of International Attention
Two notable pieces of news related to Belarus broke in recent days: the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Svetlana Alexievich, on October 8, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka was reelected...
Belarus: The Election Is Around the Corner
On September 28, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka made a speech at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit. His remarks contained sharp criticism of the United States’ policy of forceful democracy promotion...
The Upcoming Belarusian Elections and the Missing Role of External Actors
On September 26, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka arrived in New York to take part in the 70th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. His speech is expected...
In Foreign Affairs and Politics, Belarus Enters Uncharted Waters
On September 19, following his one-on-one meeting in Sochi with Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin issued an order to launch negotiations with Belarus about the creation of...
As Belarusian Election Nears, Domestic Political Situation Heats Up
On September 10, four presidential candidates were registered by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Belarus. Aside from the incumbent, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, these are: Tatyana Korotkevich, from the Speak...
Belarusian Stability in Peril
The government in Minsk has long claimed that Belarus’s socioeconomic stability is its major achievement. Indeed, from 1996 to 2014, it experienced positive GDP growth every year, and its living...
Belarus: End of the Prisoners’ Dilemma
In mid-August 2015, two major events took center stage in media coverage of Belarus: the trip to Ukraine of Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei as well as the release of...
Lukashenka’s Interview With ‘Unfriendly’ Media Outlets
On August 4, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a 4.5-hour-long interview to journalists representing three media outlets not run by the Belarusian state. Ranked in ascending order of their history of...
Belarus: Domestic Events and Outside Actors
Recent news about Belarus has recently concentrated on three somewhat connected issues: the upcoming presidential elections, economic decline, and the activities of Moscow and the collective West vis-à-vis Minsk. On...
Belarus and the Debate on the Intrinsic Value of Social Order
The upcoming presidential campaign in Belarus is gaining momentum. This pivotal theme is being discussed against the backdrop of, and in conjunction with, two other phenomena: the ongoing economic decline...
Belarus Sitting on the Splits: As Uncomfortable as It Seems?
In his interview to Euroradio, the charge d’affaires of the European Union’s delegation in Belarus, Richard Rudolph, underlined the gradual improvement in the relationship between the EU and Belarus. But...
Elections, Identity and Economic Decline in Belarus
The Belarusian parliament endorsed a new date for the upcoming presidential elections: October 11. It is unlikely that shifting elections from November (as originally planned) to October will make a...
Belarus’s National Survival Formula
Belarus’s survival and further development in a tough neighborhood is conditioned by the economy, a sense of nationalism, and geopolitical maneuvering between the major centers of power, Russia and the...
Belarusian Identity and Rapprochement With the West
Not too long ago, Belarusian identity used to be a topic of purely academic interest. But today, publications devoted to this subject appear like from a horn of plenty. Not...
Elections and Politics in and Around Belarus
The chairwoman of the Central Electoral Commission of Belarus, Lidia Ermoshina, has proposed to conduct the upcoming presidential elections on October 11—that is, more than one month earlier than the...
Belarusian Foreign Minister Makei: ‘We want to be friends with everybody’
In his lengthy and informative May 19 interview to the Washington Post, Foreign Minister of Belarus Uadzimir Makei responded to four variations of one and the same persistent question: Should...
Belarus’s Multi-Directional Foreign Policy Versus the Zero-Sum Fallacy
At the May 21–22 Riga summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP), Belarus was represented by Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei. Nothing groundbreaking was achieved at Riga with regard to...
Victory Day and Belarus’s Diplomatic Offensive
On May 9, Belarus celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. According to Emmanuel Ioffe, an authoritative Minsk historian (no relation to this author), the overall...
Belarus’s Rapprochement With the West and the Zero-Sum Fallacy
On May 7, Belarus’s national ice hockey team beat the United States for the first time, netting a 5–2 win at the world championship in Prague (BELTA, May 8). Hardly...
Lukashenka’s Annual Address on the State of the Country
On April 29, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka delivered his annual address “to the people and the parliament.” By far the most frequently discussed excerpt from his remarks—however awkward and tangential it...
Belarus’s ‘Geopolitical Maneuvering’: A Character Flaw or a Rational Foreign Policy?
Despite the limited applicability of a zero-sum game approach and the vital necessity for Belarus to maintain good relationships with both East and West, Belarus’s government continually stands accused of...
Belarus in the Run-Up to New Elections
Belarus’s presidential elections are going to take place on November 15, 2015. This time, the pre-election period promises to be less eventful than in 2001, 2006 or 2010. The opposition...
Belarus Comes Under Criticism From Both Sides
A worsening economy, a strengthening national identity, a demographic recovery, and growing Russian criticism of Belarus’s sense of nationhood apart from Russia continue to dominate the news emanating from Belarus....
Is Belarus Seeking a Helping Hand?
On March 31, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a two-hour interview to Ryan Chilcote, a Russian-speaking London-based reporter for Bloomberg Television (YouTube, April 2). Most, if not all, media commentaries...
Belarus’s Economic Crisis and National Unity
At present, news coming out of Belarus is marked by two particular refrains: the economic crisis and a search for national consolidation. These refrains may be interrelated since negative macroeconomic...
Belarus: Economic Hardships and Diplomacy
Belarus has once again entered rough economic waters. In 2015, economic growth will likely be absent (Naviny.by, February 5). In January 2015, industrial output equaled just 93.8 percent of that...
Is Belarus’s Name Recognition on the Mend?
The word “Belarus” brings to mind few, if any, specific connotations for many in the West. Until recently, they did not associate significant positive developments with that country. But now,...
Renewed Expressions of Belarus’s Stability
During a meeting with the Belarusian police directorate, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once again declared that no disturbance of public order will be tolerated in the country. He also suggested that...
Belarusian Collaborators in World War II
When, in December 1918, the Red Army captured Minsk and the short-lived (established on March 25, 1918) Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR) ceased to exist, multiple nationalist activists fled Belarus and...
The Battle of the Fifth Columns
On February 17–18, the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Sir Suma Chakrabarti, paid a visit to Minsk and met with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (ONT, February...
What Do the Minsk Armistice Talks Have in Store for Belarus?
Most political commentators agree that the Minsk armistice negotiations over the war in eastern Ukraine have raised Belarus’s international profile (see EDM, February 12). Thus, according to Kirill Koktysh, a...
Belarus’s Rising International Standing and Its Implications
Renewed high-level negotiations on the war in Ukraine, with an agreement signed in Minsk, on Thursday, February 12, further raise the stature of Belarus in the eyes of the international...
The Partisan Movements in Belarus During World War II (Part Two)
Perhaps in no other modern-day country, with the exception of Israel, have Jews historically made up a larger percentage of the overall population as in Belarus. For example, in 1897,...
Lukashenka’s Marathon Press Conference in Minsk
On January 29, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave his regular press conference for domestic and international media (Tut.by, January 29). This time it lasted more than seven hours, during which...
The Partisan Movements in Belarus During World War II (Part One)
Belarus stands out from other European countries in terms of the casualty rates it suffered during World War II: close to one-third of the entire population of Belarus perished in...
Is Belarus Benefiting From a Change in the West’s Perspective?
It is tempting to slip into a spiral of sensationalism when describing the concurrent trends in Belarus’s foreign relations and national aspirations, even though—if history is any guide—these trends may...
Reasserting Belarus’s Independent Voice
Amidst the economic crisis in Russia and the ensuing devaluation of the Belarusian ruble, Belarus has been making increasingly notable attempts to voice its independent opinion on the world stage...
Year-End Turbulence in Belarus
In the second half of December 2014, five interrelated themes engaged media attention: the last salvos of the Belarus-Russia trade war (see EDM, December 3, 2014); Russia’s reactions to Belarusian...
Belarus and Russia’s Ailing Economy
The conflict that arose after Russia’s temporary ban on imports from 23 Belarusian meat processors and on Belarusian food transit to Kazakhstan (see EDM, December 3) has not been resolved...
New Trade War Erupts Between Russia and Belarus
“We are beginning the new year without any problems whatsoever, even small ones, in our relations as we have settled them all,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka observed as recently as November...
Belarus Tries to Flap Its ‘Second Wing’
“We have been flying with one wing and we badly need to engage the other one,” President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once quipped, in reference to Belarus’s asymmetric international engagements—too much with...
Belarus: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Three inter-related themes engage attention in the Belarusian and international media: the ambivalent image of Belarus, its upcoming presidential elections, and the Belarusian economy. The economy appears to be the...
Belarus: Attractive Inside, Not Always Out
No darling of the Western media, Belarus suffers from a peculiar imbalance between two kinds of reporting about it. Much more is written about Belarus’s Soviet legacy and its relationships...
Paradoxes of Belarus’s Geopolitical Situation
There is something ironic, if not outright paradoxical, about the current configuration of Belarus’s international relationships. On its western flank, the situation appears quite negative. Notably, the European Union has...
Language Is National Security in Belarus
On October 23, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with a group of Belarusian writers. In any country surrounding Belarus, a meeting like this would probably not be similarly newsworthy. The country...
Belarus Is Asserting Its Own Voice
On October 17, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a 5.5-hour-long press conference for Russian provincial journalists. This was the 12th event of its kind. The first one occurred in 2002, when...
Gray Clouds and Silver Linings—A Net Assessment of the Situation in Belarus Since the Start of 2014
Throughout 2014, four major phenomena have affected Belarus—the war in Ukraine, the formation of the Eurasian Union, a new thaw with the West, and a slowing of economic growth. These...
Lukashenka’s Rating and Belarusian Identity
The September national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS), the most trusted Belarusian polling firm, headquartered in Lithuania, shows that both the electoral rating of...
A Thaw With the West and Its Underpinnings
On September 22, the Belarus-USA Investment Forum was held at the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan. The forum featured speakers such as Belarusian Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovch, Economy Minister...
A Change in International Relations and a Thaw With the West
Belarusian analysts continue to assess the change in the international order, driven by the crisis in Ukraine, while Belarus’s relations with the West continue to gradually improve. To some extent,...
Between Uncle Sam and ‘Uncle Vova’
Alyaksandr Lukashenka has somewhat softened his rhetoric about the supposed crucial role of the United States in sparking the Ukrainian crisis (see EDM, September 9). On September 9, during his...
Minsk: Facilitating Peace, but Benefiting From Conditions Shaped by War
The September 5 Minsk meeting of the Contact Group (CG) on Ukraine that resulted in a ceasefire deal continues to reverberate in the global media as does the overall conflict...
Belarus’s Peace Effort and a Likely Response of the West
On August 26, the 3 + 1 + 1 summit devoted to the crisis in Ukraine took place in Minsk. Presidents of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as well as...
Belarus and the ‘End of Peace’ in Europe
On July 31, the international Contact Group, which aims to resolve the crisis in Ukraine (see EDM, July 18), met in Zaslavl, Belarus. It was attended by former Ukrainian president...
Asymmetric Ties and a Balancing Act
The geopolitical perspective that Belarus is being squeezed between Russia and the European Union remains relevant. New information continues to reveal modest but noticeable attempts to improve Belarus’s relations with...
Belarus and the West: Reemerging From the Abyss
As Russia’s relations with the West rapidly deteriorate, there are noticeable signs that Belarus’s relations with the West are improving. Thus, during a July conference with Belarus’s ambassadors and consular...
Belarus’s Independence Day
Belarus’s Independence Day is celebrated on July 3. On that day, 70 years ago, Minsk was liberated from the Nazi occupiers. This July 3, President Vladimir Putin of Russia participated...
Twenty Years at the Helm of Power and a Clash of Civilizations
When Western observers look at events in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other non-Western societies, more often than not they emphasize the actions of the politicians shaping those societies, not the...
Nation-Building Implications of Russia’s Expansionism
On June 21, Ales Byalyatski, the best-known political prisoner of Belarus, was released. Byalyatski is a political activist known for his work for Viasna Human Rights Centre, of which he...
Belarus and Russia: Relationship Irritants
Two fundamental circumstances affect the incredibly close relationship between Belarus and Russia—the signing of the Eurasian Economic Union (EuEU) treaty, which goes into effect on January 1, 2015, as well...
A ‘Russian Bomb’ for Belarus
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s balancing act (see EDM, April 2) includes his ability to make statements that defy unequivocal interpretation and may please two mutually hostile parties at the same...
Belarus: Leaning to Russia While Trying to Retain a Niche of Its Own
President Alyaksander Lukashenka gave an interview to Ksenia Sobchak, a talk show host from the beleaguered Russian TV channel Dozhd (Rain), a mouthpiece of liberal Westernizers. Using the occasion, Lukashenka...
Belarus: National Identity and Schengen Visas
Understanding the nuances of ethnic and national identity in faraway countries is arguably the Achilles’s heel of Western foreign policy making. This is regrettable considering that such nuances have powerful...
Lukashenka’s New Victory and a Fight for Belarusian Identity
Less than ten days after Russia declined to cancel export duties on refined oil products that Belarus sells to the West (see EDM, May 9), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka managed to...
The Prospective Eurasian Treaty and Lukashenka’s Loyalties
On April 29, a meeting of the national leaders of the planned Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, took...
Asserting the Necessity to Defend Belarus’s Independence
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...
The Ukrainian Crisis and Lukashenka’s Rating
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...
Ideological Arguments in Belarus: Is the Cold War Back?
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...
Belarus: Silver Linings From the Crisis in Ukraine
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...
Lukashenka’s Balancing Act on Ukraine
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...
Belarus: The Chernobyl-Scale Fallout From the Crisis in Ukraine
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...
How Developments in Ukraine Affect Belarus
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...
Belarus: Unintended Consequences of Crisis in Ukraine
“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...
Why There Will Be No Ukraine-Like Crisis in Belarus
A flurry of publications and public statements comparing and contrasting Belarus and Ukraine (see EDM, February 18) continues. On February 23, Belarus celebrated the Day of the Homeland’s Defender, a...
Setting the Right Tone on Belarus: A Sequel
Not a single book about Belarus omits the issue of Belarusians’ deficiency in the area of national consolidation/identity and of perilously close (in a sense of undermining a separate identity)...
Belarus: Pandemonium in Ukraine, Russia’s Aid, and Domestic Silver Linings
The events in neighboring Ukraine have spawned multiple publications in which Ukraine and Belarus are compared and contrasted and the potential effect of the Ukrainian events on Belarus is analyzed....
Newsworthy Pronouncements in and About Belarus
Two sets of pronouncements cast light on today’s Belarus and at its possible foreseeable future. The first of these was uttered by Oleg Manaev, who was interviewed by an online...
Increasingly Broad-Based Expressions of Belarusian Nationalism
A flurry of pronouncements about a Belarusian “national idea” has continued. Unusually, however, it is not only opposition-minded Belarusians who are now talking publicly about what it means to be...
Dependency on Russia and Belarusian Identity
Recently published detailed analysis of Belarus’s economic problems on the Russian analytical portal Regnum (https://www.regnum.ru/news/1752886.html) is couched in stridently negative terms. The highlights include a decline of industrial exports to...
Belarus: Hallmarks of 2013 and Prospects for 2014
The year 2013 was marked by Belarus’s deepening economic dependency on Russia. It became apparent that the generous socio-economic model of the Belarusian state—including heavily subsidized utilities and mortgage loans;...
Belarus’s Timid but Discernible Knock at Europe’s Door
Belarus’s foreign minister, Uladzimir Makei, made noteworthy pronouncements at the summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP—which took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, on November 28–29) and at the 20th...
When Belarusians of All Stripes Perform in Vilnius
According to Kirill Koktysh, an ethnic Belarusian and a professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, any souring of relations between Russia and Ukraine boosts Russia’s generosity with...
Parallel Soul-Searching: EU on Belarus and Belarus on Russia
Dzianis Melyantsou, from the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, a Minsk-based think tank funded by the West, subjects the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy to criticism (https://www.eesc.lt/uploads/news/id521/Bell%202013_6(36).pdf). According to...
Belarus: Tough Times, Austerity and New Potential Benefits from Russia
Russia’s Office of the General Prosecutor officially petitioned that Belarus extradite Vladislav Baumgaertner, the Russian potash producer Uraslkalii’s CEO, under arrest in Minsk since August 26. The petition is under...
Will Belarus’s Social Model Survive Yet Again?
According to the Legatum Global Prosperity Index (LGPI), Belarus is a country with average prosperity: it is 58th out of 142 countries for which the index in question has been...
Evasive Maneuvering Around Belarus
The European Union’s Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, scheduled for November 28–29, is less than a month away. Unlike Ukraine, whose hopes of signing landmark political and trade deals with...
Why Do Western Belarus Policies Miss the Mark?
In addition to the ten themes of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s October 11 press conference for Russian journalists identified earlier (see EDM, October 18), one more topic deserves to be...
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Ordinary Russians
On October 11, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave his 11th press conference to Russian journalists. It lasted 5.5 hours. The audience consisted of about 90 people, mostly representing Russian provincial...
The Electoral Rating of Alyaksandr Lukashenka Is Up Again
The new (September) national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS), a pollster sponsored by the West and headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, revealed that the electoral...
Geostrategic Interest and Democracy Promotion: The Contrasting Cases of Belarus and Ukraine
A seemingly perpetual tension between Western universalism on human rights and down-to-earth geopolitics has no single resolution. With regard to Belarus, human rights remain preeminent albeit with the exception of...
The Potash War and the Receding Breed of a Red Man
At the September 19 government “skull session” on current economic and foreign policy issues, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka made several statements devoted to the Belarusian-Russian potash war. “No rogues and scoundrels...
A Business and a Pep Talk
Recent events around Belarus create the impression that if one assumes Belarus is a bridge between the two flanks of Europe, the traffic on that bridge is asymmetric. Serious business...
The Potash War: A Sequel
The Belarusian-Russian potassium (potash) war has undergone several new developments. First, it appears that Uralkalii, a Russian potash producer that, in late July, left the joint Russian-Belarusian trader, Belarusian Potassium...
A Russian-Belarusian Friendship Thriller
On August 26, Vladislav Baumgaertner of Russia was arrested in Minsk and placed in the KGB prison popularly known as Amerikanka while criminal proceedings have been launched against him by...
Failures of East Slavic Integration
In a surprising move, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka did not end up going to Kiev, Ukraine, to celebrate the 1025th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, a common legacy of...
Minsk’s Defense Against Russian Tycoon Takeovers
The Belarusian parliament has selectively revived the so-called “golden share” rule that applied between 1997 and 2008. According to that rule, the state’s representatives on the board of directors of...
Belarus: Western Universalism and Human Rights
After two heated discussions at the European Parliament’s (EP) Foreign Affairs Committee, Justas Paleckis, EP rapporteur on Belarus, modified his draft report (see EDM, June 14). The statement that in...
Belarus: An Inordinate Amount of Déjà Vu
Two identical texts in English (https://www.eurasiareview.com/28062013-belarus-and-the-eurasian-union-incremental-integration-analysis/) and in Russian (https://naviny.by/rubrics/economic/2013/06/29/ic_articles_113_182193/) specify pluses and minuses of Belarus’s involvement in the Russian-led Eurasian integration project. In the opinion of the Belarusian Institute...
Belarus: A Replay of the Old Plot
In his play “Tuteishiya” (Locals), Janka Kupala (1882–1942), Belarus’s most famous poet and playwright, depicts two characters that are mirror reflections of each other. Whereas the Western Scientist speaks Polish...
How Effective Is the Belarusian Opposition?
According to the March 2013 national survey by IISEPS, a polling firm funded by the West, the opposition is trusted by 13.1 percent of Belarusians (https://iiseps.org/old/press7.html). Internecine fights within the...
The ‘Return’ of Geopolitics and Historical Memory
In his essay, “A Map of the World: The Return of Geopolitics,” Sergei Karaganov, a Russian pundit, analyzes the newly acquired legitimacy of geopolitics that, until recently, used to be...
Will the West, East or the Far East Shape Belarus’s Future?
The existential reality of Belarus, squeezed between Russia and the European Union, is its crucial dependency on external geopolitical factors. If anything, the recent slump in Belarus’s exports exacerbates this...
Will Alyaksandr Lukashenka Outlast Leonid Brezhnev?
Justas Paleckis, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Belarus, issued his Draft Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the European External Action Service (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMPARL+PE-506.234+01+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN). The document reiterates “the need for...
Toppling the Fellow Sufferers
All too often, the more significant pieces of news from Belarus are not the ones that are discussed most frequently and voluminously. The second half of May has been no...
Tilting at Windmills: Why Do the West’s Belarus Policies Not Succeed?
In Belarus, the second Sunday of May is celebrated as the Day of the National Emblem and Flag. “For a true citizen, there is nothing more sacred than the coat...
Human Rights and a Geopolitical Tug of War in Belarus
Mixed messages regarding the potential release of the remaining political prisoners have been coming out of Belarus and from those monitoring the domestic situation in that country. On the one...
Between Scylla and Charybdis: Belarus’s Balancing Act
On April 23, following his trip to Minsk, Russia’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu revealed that Russia plans to create its own military airbase on Belarusian soil near the city...
Belarus: Modernization amid Two Integration Projects
The latest stream of news from Belarus has three refrains—modernization, integration into the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), and reinvigoration of ties with the European Union. All three are contained in...
Passions Over Belarus’s Would-Be Rapprochement with the West
There has been no breakthrough. Neither Alyaksandr Lukashenka nor (at least) his foreign minister has received an invitation to the September 2013 summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP)...
Belarus: Geopolitical Preferences and Realities of Foreign Relations
Geopolitics remains the most common angle from which Belarus is looked at, not only by the analysts from Russia and the West but also by domestic commentators. A case in...
Minsk Grows Tired of EU’s Double Standards
On March 25, Alena Kupchina, the Belarusian deputy minister of foreign affairs, met with Maira Moira, the European Union’s envoy to Belarus (https://www.mfa.gov.by/press/news_mfa/e9045fcd71ff4ac8.html). The increased frequency of such meetings is...
Belarus: Between Tangible Benefits and Make-Believe Policies
Recent events around Belarus draw attention to a chasm between the Belarusian policies pursued by Russia and by the West. This month, Russia agreed to retain an unprecedented scale of...
Belarus Continues Its Drift Toward Russia while Moving up in Human Development Rank
On March 17, accompanied by an 80-member delegation, including many directors of state-run companies, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka left for a seven-day visit to Indonesia and Singapore (https://www.svaboda.org/content/article/24931615.html). On March...
The March 2013 Record of Belarus’s Foreign and Not-So-Foreign Relations
Since the beginning of March, three hallmark events occurred in Belarus’s relations with the countries located to the west of it. First, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka visited Caracas, Venezuela, where he...
Belarus: The Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Goes On
Multiple, if inconclusive, signs suggest that the Western policy of punitive sanctions against Belarus has once again reached a dead end and may soon be reconsidered. Uta Zapf, a member...
Public Opinion and Hi-Tech Startups in ‘Europe’s Last Dictatorship’
Independent Belarusian analysts continue to mull over the results of the December 2012 national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (see EDM, February 1). According to...
Belarus-Russia Integration Is Given a Boost
While Minsk has been recently trying its best to revive its relationships with the West (see EDM, February 13), reciprocal steps have not yet been undertaken by the Western countries...
A Potential Rapprochement with the West and the Prospects of Economic Liberalization
Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has generated a flurry of activity on the country’s western flank. In charge of this ministry from late August 2012, Vladimir Makei held meetings with...
A Mixed Bag of News in Belarus to Start off the Year
Perhaps the greatest recent news involving Belarus—news, which all Belarusian regardless of political stripes considered to be great—is Victoria Azarenka’s second tennis victory at the Australian Open on January 26....
Belarus: A Countdown Toward Political Change?
In 2012, Belarus was recovering from the financial crisis, the peak of which was in summer 2011. The achievements along this line have been the international trade surplus, the 20-percent...
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the Martians
On November 26, Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a 1.5-hour interview to Reuters. The text of the interview was published on the internet portal “Belorusskie Novosti” (https://naviny.by/rubrics/politic/2012/11/27/ic_articles_112_180033/), but Lukashenka’s seemingly casual remark...
Belarus and Lithuania: The Estranged Brethren
On November 6, two unknown perpetrators threw two bottles with a flammable substance into the Lithuanian embassy compound in Minsk. The Investigating Committee of Belarus launched a criminal investigation; the...
Belarus and Russia: Affinity and Dependency
No two countries in the world today are as close as Russia and Belarus. This closeness has multiple aspects, one of which is structural affinity between the Russian and Belarusian...
Russia: Belarus’s Economic Lifeline and Cultural Magnet
To Belarus, Russia is not just the “meaningful other.” It provides an existential lifeline to Belarus as a de facto custodian of Belarus’s socio-economic model and a cultural magnet of...
Setting the Right Tone on Belarus
On September 26, Belarus released two of the 13 political prisoners listed in a resolution of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in July 2012 (Nasha Niva, September 27; tut.by, July 7)....
Belarus Takes Steps to Strengthen Economy Despite Negative Relations with West
During the first six months of 2012, the export of refined oil products from Belarus has grown by $2.4 billion compared with the same period in 2011, and the export...
Belarus Aims to Rebuild Its Ties with the West
Two top personnel changes have taken place in Minsk. The longest-serving Belarusian foreign minister, Sergei Martynov (in charge from March 2003 to August 20, 2012) was replaced by Vladimir Makei,...
Coping with the East-West Imbalance in Belarus’s Foreign Relations
On July 18, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev paid an official visit to Minsk. Medvedev’s visit was somewhat clouded by the July 4 penetration of Belarus’s airspace by a light...
The EU Visa Ban and the Fate of Independent Belarusian Pollsters
Lidiya Yermoshina, chair of the Belarus Central Electoral Commission, long on the EU travel ban list, was invited to the Vienna-based July 12 OSCE conference “Democratic Elections and Election Observation.”...
Belarus Defies Clichés
Even after more than twenty years of statehood, Belarusians have not developed a distinctive national identity. In most countries of the Old World, the marker of identity is language. According...
Is Belarus Firmly Within Russia’s Orbit?
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Belarus and the nature of the Belarus-Russia relationship continue to be debated. It can certainly be argued that “the Belarusian president is merely forestalling...
Multiple Signs of Stabilization in Belarus
If there is any refrain to recent developments in Belarus, it is political and socio-economic stabilization. First, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has not succumbed to political pressure –...
Belarus: The End of a Cycle
On May 8, Alexander Lukashenka delivered his annual address to the National Assembly and to the Belarusian people. Mr. Lukashenka postponed the address, which was originally scheduled for April 19,...
Democracy Promotion, a Release of Two Prisoners, and a Tug of War over Belarus
The Belarusian political commentator Andrei Fyodorov cast light on why the fight for democracy in Belarus, which the EU and the US have been waging non-stop since 1996, has never...
Economic Normalization and European Sanctions
The results of the March 2012 national survey by the Independent Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (an entity funded by the United States) reveal that the number of Belarusians...
Belarus: A Death Penalty, a Standoff with the EU and a Drift Toward Russia
Of the two people – Dmitry Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalyov, both 25, who were found guilty of carrying out the bombing in Minsk subway on April 11, 2011, killing 15...
Belarus: No Change in the Offing
One of the weaknesses of Belarus’s geopolitical situation and indeed of its self-perception is that Belarus is a crossroads, a land in between. In many ways this cliché informs thinking...
Who Is Losing Belarus?
“With the decline of America’s global preeminence, weaker countries will be more susceptible to the assertive influence of major regional powers,” writes Zbigniew Brzezinski in his recent Foreign Policy essay...
Belarus: Marking the Anniversary of Tragic Events
On December 23, for four hours President Alyaksandr Lukashenka responded to questions from domestic and foreign journalists. He expressed certainty that the financial crisis, caused by price hikes on oil...
Washington Struggles to Formulate Strategy On Belarus
On November 23, Ales Belyatsky, a Belarusian human rights activist, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison after being convicted of failing to pay taxes of over...
Belarus Crisis: A Show of Solidarity
On September 29-30, the Eastern Partnership summit took place in Warsaw, the second such summit after the inaugural Prague meeting on May 7, 2009. The summit was to be attended...
Is Belarus a Basket Case?
For the last fifteen years, Belarus has been the world’s leader in terms of the sheer number of predictions of its imminent economic collapse. And yet since 1996, the country...