Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, reliant on Moscow after crushing post-election dissent, has pledged unfailing allegiance to his much larger neighbour as the Kremlin confronts the West over Ukraine’s future orientation and he seeks to safeguard his own position in a referendum to overhaul the constitution.

In a series of pronouncements, Lukashenko has lined up directly alongside Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin as a vast contingent of Russian forces pours into the country for military exercises – coinciding with the months-long deployment of more than 100,000 troops along Russia’s other borders with Ukraine as well as in Moldova’s Russian-backed separatist Transnistria region.

Putin says Russia has no intention of staging any sort of incursion into Ukraine, but has demanded “security guarantees” from the West, notably formal assurances that NATO will expand no further and Ukraine will never become a member.

Lukashenko’s support for Moscow stands in contrast with the neutrality he sought to adopt eight years ago when Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and fomented a separatist revolt in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. In the meantime, the veteran leader has enlisted Moscow’s help in engineering a crackdown on opponents who had staged mass protests denouncing his 2020 re-election as fraudulent.

In his annual state of the nation address to parliament late last month, Lukashenko resorted to eloquent appeals for Slav unity, pledging to bring Ukraine’s pro-Western government back into that fold and accusing the West of plotting to smash historic ties he said bound Belarus to both Russia and Ukraine.

“It is important for the west to drown the Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood in blood, our Slav brotherhood,” Lukashenko told parliament, echoing the Pan-Slavic rhetoric which Putin has in the past deployed to decry Ukraine’s existence as a separate independent nation. “Our inextricable ties are the basis of common security and survival and so we will return our Ukraine to the bosoms of our Slavs.”

President points to Russian-led Kazakhstan deployment

In an interview this weekend with Russian television, Lukashenko said Russia and its allies had shown their military prowess and efficiency with the rapid deployment of forces of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CTSO) to help quell unrest last month in Kazakhstan.

“How big was our force there? Nothing really, but we showed them. And if it had been necessary, we could have boosted four forces,” he said.

“It is simpler with Europe. Do you think they can’t see this? They understand that it is pointless to fight with us, above all, to fight with Russia. And we’re not talking about nuclear or similar weapons. It is better not to tangle with us.”.

Any conflict with Ukraine, he said, “would be over in three-four days”.

In his 3½-hour address to parliament, Lukashenko also mocked the many opposition activists who have fled the country, many to neighbouring Lithuania and Poland, to avoid the sweeping post-election crackdown – many who stayed have been sentenced to long prison terms.

“My advice to you: come home, repent and kneel,” Lukashenko told parliament. “It will get worse further on.”

Yuliana Shemetovets, a spokeswoman for the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans, a group of IT specialists dedicated to disrupting the country’s rail network and troop movements, said opposition leaders viewed Lukashenko’s comments with derision.

“No one in the community abroad obviously took these words seriously,” she told The Tribune. “There are absolutely no guarantees that people can safely return back and everyone understands that his revenge could be dangerous.”

Belarusian security forces crushed all dissent in the months following the August 2020 protests, with about 30,000 people detained, most for short periods. Courts handed down very long sentences to leading dissenters on charges ranging from fraud to sedition – the husband of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s beaten and now exiled opponent according to the official count, was jailed for 18 years.

According to Western estimates, more than 30,000 Russian troops could be deployed in Belarus in connection with the exercises, dubbed “Allied Resolve 2022”. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was in the ex-Soviet state helping oversee the planned exercises and Moscow sent a pair of long-range nuclear-capable bombers on patrol over its ally.

European leaders proceeded with diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions, with French President Emmanuel Macron expected to visit both Moscow and Kyiv next week.

Lukashenko has been the beneficiary of both financial and political support from Russia since the mass protests, with Putin at one point suggesting he was prepared to dispatch military help. Western countries, led by the European Union, have imposed escalating sanctions on Minsk, including curbs on key Belarusian exports, like potash, with neighbouring Lithuania spearheading the drive.

Lukashenko last year met the Kremlin leader at least a half dozen times, partly to proceed with plans dating from the 1990s to forge a “union state” between the two neighbours but he has at the same time been deliberate in stressing Belarus’s “sovereignty” to guard against any notion that his nation of 9 million might simply be absorbed in the process.

Lukashenko, first elected in 1994, also addressed in his speech to parliament the February 27 constitutional referendum – introducing changes clearly intended to consolidate and extend his grip on power.

“Crucial point in history”

He described the vote as “the most crucial point in our modern history – the renewal of the political system, a new level of iteration between state and society”.

The focal point of the amendments is the reinvention of the All-Belarus People’s assembly – currently an ill-defined body that rarely meets — into a key institution packed with legislative and policy-making powers. The assembly would operate alongside the current rubber-stamp parliament but clearly dwarf it in terms of importance and authority.

The amendments would enable Lukashenko to remain as head of state for two further terms, until 2035. They also provide for the elimination from the constitution of a provision to “strive for neutrality” in foreign policy, further evidence of an alignment with Moscow.

Regional analyst Alexander Morozov described the referendum as an attempt by Lukashenko to nullify the past aberrations of his administration and restore the legitimacy he craves from Western countries who have refused to recognise his re-election.

“If Lukashenko’s failure in the August 2020 election is one extreme point on the continum of events, then February 27 is the opposite extreme point … After the referendum, he will believe that he has fully restored damaged legitimacy,” Morozov wrote on the website Reform.by.
“However, Lukashenko has already paid too high a price to the Kremlin to retain power.”