The popular Russian observer Stanislav Belkovsky on Lukashenko’s new role after the multilateral talks in Minsk.
Belkovsky. – Alexander Grigoryevich is the principal beneficiary of these meetings.
Koroleva. – Recall how he was called the principal dictator, Europe’s last dictator.
Belkovsky. – No more: he has resigned this holy office and handed it over to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. It was the most important objective of the whole system of Minsk negotiations, which were proposed by Alexander Grigoryevich; he has achieved what he wanted. He is not the worst in Europe now. Europe and NATO can press him to their loving bosom. Just as he desired.
Still a dictator, just not Europe’s last.
It’s funny how Putin has managed to make Lukashenka look half-decent in comparison.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the West saw Russia as the rational actor in the ex-USSR. With the exception of the Baltics, the leadership of the rest was viewed as crooks at best and loony tunes despots at worst. The West was prepared to let Russia step in to deal with mad nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, for example. Nowadays, I’m struggling to see the difference between Gamsakhurdia and Putin, except Putin has nukes.
It was this line of thinking which led to the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, because those were the countries suspected of falling prey to a James Bond villain as a president. It all seems so naive now.
It’s a direct and perhaps inevitable consequence of Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012 and, more generally, his decision not to hand over power until, perhaps, some point in a distant future.