Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun met with Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya at the outset of a trip that could see the United States take a significant role in a political eruption that threatens one of Russia’s closest allies.
“The very fact of the meeting itself sends [a] powerful message to Belarusian people: They are not alone,” a Baltic official said after Biegun and Tikhanovskaya spoke in Lithuania.
Biegun’s overture to Tikhanovskaya, the schoolteacher and stay-at-home mom who challenged Belarusian tyrant Alexander Lukashenko in the August elections, marked a major overture from the Trump administration at a time when the U.S. has very limited diplomatic presence in the country. Their meeting took place on Monday, before a Tuesday stop in Moscow, where Kremlin officials are working to help Lukashenko keep power in defiance of unprecedented protests against his declaration of victory in fraudulent elections.
“It’s important to shine a spotlight on what’s happening in Belarus, to raise the bar on Lukashenko’s using violence,” former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, who also worked as special envoy for the crisis in Ukraine before resigning during the impeachment controversy, said of Biegun’s trip to Vilnius and Moscow. “And also [to convey] that the idea of military intervention or a crack down on the Belarusian people that Russia would participate in would be unacceptable, and there would be very severe consequences for Russia if they did that.”
The Belarusian protests come at a tricky time for both Russia and the U.S., as Lukashenko has irritated Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months due to an apparent fear that the Kremlin would pressure him to bring the former Soviet vassal state back into a political union under Moscow’s leadership.
Trump administration officials have sought to improve ties with the Belarusian regime in order to help avert such an outcome, which would empower Putin to sharpen military threats against neighboring NATO allies, but Lukashenko’s brutality in attempting to suppress the protests hardened attitudes in Washington and Western Europe.
“It’s important to keep focusing on this being the Belarusian people themselves demanding the right to choose their own government,” Volker said. “It’s not a contest between the U.S. and Russia.”
The protests have persisted since the Aug. 9 election, in which Lukashenko claimed 80% of the vote despite previously having felt vulnerable to political threats even from weak challengers.
“Probably for the first time, Lukashenko does not really have a majority, which was a surprise to him — probably even a surprise to the people themselves,” said Belarusian native Alena Kudzko, a senior foreign policy analyst at GLOBSEC in Bratislava. “This is something new in the country for sure, and this is the momentum that we’re having right now.”
The protests have not faded as quickly as some outside observers expected, but neither has Lukashenko succeeded in squelching the demands for new elections. Instead, he has turned back to Putin for assistance, complimenting the Kremlin leader and openly discussing his use of Russian advisers to run propaganda campaigns.
“It’s very visible in terms of the coordination of narratives by the Russians,” Kudzko said. “Of course, there are also the speculations of how far it can go in terms of whether there is Russian presence in terms of security forces training.”
Lukashenko has been ostentatious in turning back to Putin, as he refused to take a call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and claimed that both Russia and Belarus face “a threat” from NATO. Such statements call attention to the strategic significance of Belarus for Russia in hypothetical military operations against Western countries, analysts say, and it hints at the role that Biegun might play as he begins a dialogue with the Belarusian opposition leaders and Putin’s advisers.
“There’s nobody who can mediate between the opposition, Lukashenko, and Moscow,” the Atlantic Council’s Anders Aslund said. “And that’s what Steve Biegun can do … He has inserted himself as a possible key mediator in this drama.”
