Belarus is quickly becoming a “vassal state” of Russia
Schools teach patriotic lessons and teach students how to assemble guns, while textbooks have been rewritten to promote the Russian view of history. Factories produce uniforms for soldiers fighting against Ukraine. Children from occupied Ukrainian territory are taken care of in summer camps of state conglomerates.
These now-familiar scenes would hardly be mentioned in wartime Russia, except that they were recently borrowed from Belarus, an autocratic country of 9.4 million that borders Russia, Ukraine, and NATO members Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. .. Long uneasy in the job of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Belarus is increasingly doing its bidding, socially, militarily and economically.
The most recent expression of Belarus’ allegiance to Moscow – and the threat it poses to the West – is its alleged decision to allow Moscow position tactical nuclear weapons on its territory, as well as equipping its bombers with nuclear weapons. It is also an important step, say pro-democracy advocates and military experts, toward Russia’s inclusion of Belarus, a long-held goal of Putin.
“Belarus’s sovereignty is evaporating very quickly,” said Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Any sphere you take, Russia’s control has become extremely large and increasing.”
It wasn’t always like that. Throughout the post-Cold War era, the country’s authoritarian leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, played a clever game of professing loyalty to Moscow and defending the Soviet slogans of “brotherhood and unity” while ensuring that relations with Moscow never became too much. almost threatening his grip on power. He even occasionally contacted Western countries that wanted to bring Belarus closer to Europe economically.
That arrangement erupted in 2014, after Russia took Crimea, raising the alarming possibility for Lukashenko that Belarus, too, could be swallowed up by its larger neighbour. Putin reinforced those fears by speaking openly about a political union of the two states.
But it completely collapsed in 2020 when Mr. Lukashenko cracked down on hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters, making him an international pariah. In that moment of danger, Mr. Putin stepped in, offering cheap energy, an economic lifeline and an implicit assurance of security assistance should it prove necessary.
With Belarus now virtually dependent on Russia, Mr. Lukashenko has become a crucial partner in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ceasing to contribute only his own army to the fight.
Pavel Latushka, a former Belarusian diplomat and minister turned dissident, has published evidence that Belarus is complicit in the forced displacement of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territory. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in March arrest warrants issued for Mr Putin and his children’s rights commissioner who accuse them of deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.
In late May, Mr. Latushka presented to Ukrainian prosecutors the names and details of about a dozen children from Russian-occupied Ukraine who had been taken to camps in Belarus. In an interview, he said that since last month, about 2,150 Ukrainian children have been taken to at least three camps run by state-owned companies in Belarus, including the Belaruskali potash company.
Belaruskali was placed under EU and US sanctions in the wake of Lukashenko’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Ukrainian prosecutors have confirmed that they investigate Mr. Latushka’s allegations.
Mr Latushka said he discovered documents signed under the auspices of the “Union State”, a vague alignment of Russia and Belarus, which ordered the relocation of Ukrainian children carried out.
“The decision was personally signed by Lukashenko”, who currently chairs the board of directors of the supranational body.
The apparent placement of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus is also part of agreements made in the Union state, although the Kremlin has said all nuclear material will be under Russian control. The nuclear weapons are a source of pride for Mr Lukashenko, who believes they will “give him the opportunity to remain in power until his death,” Mr Latushka said.
But they also give Moscow a monopoly on violence that diminishes the control of the Belarusian strongman, brings Russia inside Belarusian borders and poses a potential threat to Belarusian security – all points that the government’s opponents are trying to address. – make clear to Russians.
“We are now ringing all bells about the deployment of nuclear weapons, which will ensure Russia’s presence in Belarus for many years to come,” said Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Belarus’s main opposition leader, now in exile.
“Even after the regime changes,” she said, “it will be hard to get rid of them.”
As she spoke, it had been three years since her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested on trumped-up charges for daring to run against Mr Lukashenko in the 2020 elections. He was jailed before the vote, which Ms. Tikhanovskaya to flee in his place. In December 2021 he was sentenced to 18 years in prisonN.
His children, now 13 and 7, regularly write to him in jail, but it’s been three months since they’ve heard anything. Four of his lawyers have been stripped of their licenses.
A human rights organization, Viasna, has counted 1,495 political prisoners, including its founder, Ales Bialitski, in Belarusian prisons. Mr Bialitski, who shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with groups from Russia and Ukraine, was sentenced last month to 10 years in prison for smuggling and for financing “actions that seriously violate public order”.
Opposition leaders such as Ms Tikhanovskaya – sentenced to 15 years in absentia in March, and Mr Latushka, who was also sentenced to 18 years in absentia – have tried to influence pro-democracy forces in Belarus. But it’s getting harder, they said, because of the growing proliferation of pro-Russian propaganda. Much of their efforts are devoted to warning their compatriots about the consequences of a possible nuclear attack from Belarusian territory.
“I don’t want to imagine, but let’s imagine that nuclear weapons will be used at some point when Russia is losing and these weapons are flying out of Belarus,” she said. “Well, I think there must be some sort of backlash. No one will find out whether this button was pressed in the Kremlin or in Lukashenko’s palace, right? A retaliatory strike, if there is one, if the West decides what it means to respond, it will fly to Belarus.”
They also try to influence Western leaders and lament that their appeals – at least for now – mostly fall on deaf ears. The United States and the European Union hit Minsk with sanctions after the 2020 protests and again when Mr Lukashenko forced a commercial airliner to land in Minsk because it was carrying a dissident blogger. After Russia invaded Ukraine from Belarus, the European Union—then already its second-largest trading partner—joined the United States and Britain in the toughest sanctions in the country’s history.
But how to respond to the latest escalation has become a mystery to the West.
At a recent conference in Slovakia, President Emmanuel Macron of France called Belarus a “vassal state” but said Europe bore some of the blame.
“We trapped him in the hands of the Russians,” Mr Macron said of Mr Lukashenko, in response to a question about his current approach to the country. “If your question is, ‘Do I think we should be more aggressive towards Belarus,’ my answer is no,” he said, emphasizing that Western leaders Mr. Lukashenko had to offer an “exit strategy”.
Mr Macron, who was criticized for making equally sympathetic comments about Mr. Putin shortly after the Russian invasion, was widely condemned by Belarusian dissidents.
Ms Tikhanovskaya said it appeared that some Western leaders were trying to whitewash Lukashenko, justifying their lukewarm response on the belief that he had at least not joined the invasion – although there are allegations that Belarusian officers are training Russian recruits.
Instead of resisting pressure to join forces with Mr Putin, she said, Mr Lukashenko was deeply concerned about fueling domestic unrest over a war that remains unpopular in Belarus. If that led to another major uprising, he could be forced to turn to Moscow for security assistance. And that, Mr Latushka said, could be the final step towards Mr Putin’s ultimate goal of “absorbing Belarus”.