Lukashenka Faces a Crisis of a New Level
- 21.08.2021, 11:20
Eastern European Gaddafi fell into the main minefield.
In recent months, the Belarusian authorities have faced a new level of the image crisis. This state can be called anti-teflon - when all reputational problems do not bounce off the regime but stick to it, says an article on the Carnegie Moscow Center website.
Runner Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who has quarreled with sports officials, does not want to return to Minsk from the Olympics, fearing that, after criticizing her in the state media, there may be reprisals against her. We do not know whether this is true, but after the incident with the Ryanair flight, everyone expects the worst. As a result, Tsimanouskaya is rescued from repatriation by the Japanese police and Polish diplomats, guarding her at the embassy as if she were being hunted in Tokyo.
On August 3, Vitaly Shishov, the head of one of the Belarusian diaspora associations, is found hanged in Kyiv. Journalists quickly find out that the deceased was associated with the Ukrainian far-right, which is followed by a train of suspicious and unsolved deaths. But the Belarusian trace of Shishov's murder is the only version of the main Western media next week. His death is cited as another argument that sanctions against Lukashenka should be toughened.
A couple of days later, CNN journalists find a former missile depot near Minsk, converted into a military unit. The TV channel is reporting about a "possible camp for dissidents" because the facility is guarded by the military, new CCTV cameras have been installed, and the film crew was not allowed there. Today, such a set of evidence is enough for the largest American media to suspect the Belarusian authorities in the construction of concentration camps. A video appeared, from which it is clear that this is not a camp but a warehouse.
The reputation of the new world outcast, the Eastern European Gaddafi, has led to the fact that, in conflict or suspicious stories around Lukashenka's actions, there is no room for doubts in his favor. Western officials and the media openly call him an international terrorist, and the actions of Minsk on the border with Lithuania are hybrid aggression.
Because of this, in the public discourse in the West, there is no room for doubts about what to do with Lukashenka. No influential politician now dares to suggest any other approach than tougher sanctions.
New zeitgeist
On the anniversary of the start of the Belarusian protests, the US, Canada, and the UK have imposed new sanctions against Minsk. Canadian and British restrictions have come close to European sectoral sanctions. London also hit Lukashenka's longtime friend, Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev, whose family has assets in the UK.
US sanctions are potentially the most painful. In addition to the recent restrictions against a significant part of the Belarusian petrochemical industry, the largest exporters - Belaruskali and the Neman tobacco factory, businessmen close to Lukashenka and their oil trader companies have now come under attack.
As usual with US sanctions, their direct effect - barring Americans from working with blacklisted companies - may be less visible than the side effect. It is now dangerous to settle accounts with these companies in dollars. Western banks will be afraid to serve such customers, and buyers, if they have a choice, will prefer less problematic suppliers out of harm's way. The Belarusian companies will have to dump and invest in the creation of gray intermediary structures.
Belarusian companies are becoming toxic not only in the eyes of Western businessmen. After one of the two Belarusian refineries, Naftan, fell under US sanctions, even Russian oil companies refused to directly supply raw materials there.
Judging by the fact that Naftan has not stopped, and all the participants in the process are making vague and contradictory statements, the parties have found a format for deliveries through gasket firms and do not want to advertise it so as not to expose intermediaries to future rounds of sanctions, which look inevitable.
And here the migration crisis is the main minefield because, for the second time after the story with Pratasevich, Lukashenka appears not only as a violator of human rights but also as a threat to European security. On August 18, EU interior ministers will meet for an emergency meeting on this issue.
If the migration crisis is not resolved by the end of the summer, Brussels will react. Lithuania plans to initiate an extension of the EU sectoral sanctions against Minsk and turn to NATO to "deploy a team to combat hybrid threats in the country," President Gitanas Nauseda said.
Vilnius's new proposals to the European Union are more radical than anything that was on the table before - a complete shutdown of the transit of Belarusian potassium through the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. Potash is more than 8% of Belarusian exports or $2.5 billion in revenue in 2020. Unlike oil, potash can't be rerouted to alternative Russian ports because there is no infrastructure and no available terminals.
The large-scale Belarusian-Russian exercises “West-2021” will add to the nervousness in September. Each time, these exercises are full of phobias on the theme that Russian troops may attack some of their neighbors on the sly or not leave Belarus. But unlike the relatively peaceful years of 2013 or 2017, the exercises are now being superimposed on Minsk's conflict with its neighbors and Lukashenka's internal political interest in constantly maintaining the front-line atmosphere.
For the first time, a situation has arisen around Belarus with a real risk of accidental border armed incidents, not because the parties plan to attack each other, but, according to the classic game theory, because of the expectation of mutual provocations and the interpretation of each other's actions in the most hostile manner.
The new status quo in Eastern Europe is best emphasized by the fact that, until 2020, Minsk earned foreign policy points by positioning itself as a balanced and pragmatic partner of the West in maintaining regional stability against the backdrop of an aggressive Russia. And today, Moscow's unwillingness to get involved in conflicts with NATO at the whim of an ally may become almost the only factor restraining Lukashenka's impulsiveness.