Minsk's Balancing Act as Moscow's Ally

Minsk is a faithful ally of Moscow, but not a mere Russian stooge. Instead, it is a regional ally, perhaps akin to North Korea vis-à-vis China.

To remain in power, Belarus President Aleksandr “Daddy” Lukashenka follows a tough balancing act to please Russia’s head Vladimir Putin.

“Daddy” (Bat’ko) perhaps even outdoes the Kremlin master in domestic repression. However, the Minsk dictator delivers a bare minimum of damage on the international stage.

To secure his realm, the strong man of Belarus has introduced various emergency measures. Major elements of martial law are in place.

Reeling from Western sanctions, Lukashenka froze prices and wages as well as blocked exports. He stepped up anti-Western and, especially, anti-Polish propaganda.

“Daddy” outlawed protestst and increased the military draft. He virtually banned foreign travel, confiscating passports.

To make his controls airtight, on pain of losing their Belarus citizenship, the Minsk dictator ordered his Belarusian Poles to surrender their Poland issued documents, akin to U.S. “green cards,” allowing them visaless travel to Poland and other Polish state social benefits. Like others, Minsk’s Poles are to stay put.

Lukashenka has further cracked down on dissent under the guise of fighting “terrorism.” Actually, in a few cases the official repression targets real guerrilla and sabotage activities.

There are Belarusians fighting on the Ukrainian side in the war of defense against Moscow. Some train in Poland.

Reportedly, at least a few penetrated into Belarus itself, where they carried out attacks on transport and infrastructure to undermine Russia’s war effort.

How successful Lukashenka has been against such clandestine operators is hard to say. However, it is inconvertible that, with the help of his secret police, he has used the guerrilla threat as an excuse to crush all other domestic opposition, specifically of the non-violent kind.

Many unfortunates have lingered in jail over twice as long as the war in Ukraine has lasted. Over 1,200 of Belarusian men and women are stuck in Lukashenka’s dungeons and camps for political reasons.

The most prominent of them are usually journalists, such as Andrzej Poczobutt who happens to be both a reporter and a Belarus Polish community leader. Imprisoned in early 2021, the charges against him and his confederates have been recently updated to “terrorism.”

In Russia the measures against the Polish minority, which is tiny, are similarly ham-fisted. So Lukashenka emulates Putin here on a larger scale. Polish schools were the first to feel his wrath; then it was the turn of Polish cemeteries. The cue came from the Kremlin.

In Katyn, where in 1940 Stalin’s NKVD exterminated thousands of Polish officers, the master of the Kremlin removed some Polish symbols from the military cemetery there. The Minsk dictator immediately started destroying graves of Polish soldiers on a mass scale.

Many gravesides and monuments had been either destroyed or “forgotten” during Soviet times. After the implosion of the USSR, the local Poles and their brethren across the border took to restoring and commemorating the dead. Eventually, the Polish government chipped in.

Most of the graveyards restored or newly established concerned the Polish army KIA from the Polish-Bolshevik War (1919-1920) and the Second World War (1939-1945). Lukashenka’s KGB has now launched a comprehensive operation to destroy them.

Poland condemns this as “barbarism.”

Minsk continues to wage a hybrid war against Warsaw along the border, periodically snarling traffic east and dispatching groups of illegal Third World and post-Soviet migrants west. Same aggressive assault obtains toward Lithuania and Latvia.

Belarus has recently threatened extermination of the Polish and American enemies in case of an allegedly imminent invasion. Like Moscow, Minsk speaks ominously about nuclear weapons and conducts cyclical military exercises at the Polish border.

Meanwhile, Lukashenka has agreed to host thousands of new Russian troops and create combined units with Belarusian soldiers. He also cooperates in Russian attacks against Ukraine from Belarus soil. However, he has not yet officially entered the war.

Putin nudges him ever so gently, promising, for instance, “to accelerate” the unification of both realms. Lukashenka would like to avoid that for now without antagonizing his hegemon, however.

The Belarusian strongman self-isolates increasingly, thus becoming ever more reliant on Moscow. For example, Belarus joined Russia in staying away from the latest European summit. Minsk further has eschewed to renew its ambassador’s diplomatic accreditation with the European Union.

This will only get worse before it gets better. “Daddy” will do anything it takes to keep himself afloat.