Cole Warned Lukashenko

• Sergey Kovalchuk
• 26.03.2026, 9:43

Sitting alone at the bad guys' table is very uncomfortable.

Older readers remember well how today's heavy and flabby Minsk tsarredvorets looked like a young goat against the aging and constantly "working on documents" with a glass in his hands Yeltsin. Lukashenko's keen desire to get an audience with the Chief of the Planet is very reminiscent of his "friendship" with Yeltsin in the 90s.

But let's get to the point.

A brief historical excursion: the 90s were a march of sovereignty of the former Soviet republics, whose political elites were doing their best to improve the lives of their citizens, and did not forget their own.

The Baltic States immediately took a full course to the West, Central Asia partly plunged into the chaos of wars, and partly built a course towards Moscow, the South Caucasus clarified relations among themselves, Moldova (with war) and Ukraine (with postponed war) hovered between the East and the West.

What about Belarus?

The presidential elections in Minsk were held rather late - in 1994. By that time, the issues of economic shock changes had already come to a head, and a young populist came to power, who gave an unambiguous answer to the most important question "with whom to go?": to go with Russia.

April 2, 1996, the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus was signed with abundant celebrations and libations. Lukashenko took shots in the Kremlin, tried to please not only the decrepit Yeltsin, but also the regional elites of the Russian Federation, and clearly aspired to the Kremlin throne.

But fate decreed otherwise, and the weakening hand of the patriarch of the new Russian statehood passed the scepter into the tenacious clutch of Vladimir Putin.

Two and a half decades have passed, and Lukashenko has found a new "idol" to whom he tries to be close. Donald Trump is the new target to which the head of the Minsk regime is moving. Certainly not to sit in the chair of the American president, but certainly - to be closer to the center of planetary power.

He understands that the fate of Maduro and Khamenei can happen to other guys who, for one reason or another, are not in the fairway of American foreign policy. Our comrade is unlikely to be allowed to break dishes at Mar-a-Lago, but he understands very well that he needs to establish personal relations with Trump - just as he did with Yeltsin in his time.

And then Special Representative John Cole reminded of the difficult prospect: "I don't know how high school works in your country, but in our country it looks like this. You come to lunch, and there's a table of good guys. And the good guys sit there and eat, and everybody wants to sit at that table of good guys.

And there's a table of losers - and that's where you are. You're there with Cuba. You're there with Iran, you're there with Venezuela and others. Putin isn't there because he wasn't invited to the school at all.

I said if you want to sit at the table of the good guys, you have to start acting like a normal country. You can't do what you're doing now. Everybody's not happy about it.

And I said to him, "Look, you're the only one left at the bad guys' table right now, so you better be careful."

Sitting alone at the bad guys' table is very uncomfortable. There's a danger of drawing all the attention to yourself. And that ends badly for even the toughest bad guys.

Sergei Kovalchuk, "Salidarnasts"