Belorussian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko’s violent crackdown on protests against fraudulent elections is throwing a wrench into an effort by the United States and NATO allies to peel away Russia’s closest ally.
“If Lukashenko beats his own people, if he continues on what he’s doing these days, then he is in Russia’s orbit anyway,” a Baltic official said. “I don’t see the point in speaking with him, engaging him, if he is beating people so brutally.”
Thousands of Belorussians poured into the streets of Minsk and other cities over the last week after Lukashenko claimed to have won 80% of the vote in a corrupt election involving the man known as “Europe’s last dictator.” It’s an unprecedented show of domestic hostility for his regime, but Western observers doubt that the upheaval is strong enough to force his departure — and those misgivings, combined with the brutality of Lukashenko’s security services in response to the outcry, presents a dilemma for American and European officials who have sought to stymie Kremlin ambitions in the former Soviet satellite state.
“We are extremely worried about the situation we’re seeing there,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said during a Friday press briefing with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We don’t want to push them back into the Russian hemisphere, and they have been helpful, for instance, on issues such as Ukraine in the past. So, we would like to see a Belarus which moves our way in as far as standards and values are concerned.”
But Saturday, it was clear just the opposite was underway. Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone, and Russia released a statement suggesting further cooperation between the two countries and warning against outside interference. “These problems should not be exploited by destructive forces seeking to harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries,” the statement said.
The open oppression of the last week has thrown the rift between Belarus and democratic governments into dramatic relief. Journalists and activists have published images of street-side beatings while the screams of detainees could be heard in video purportedly recorded outside Minsk prisons. Pompeo, who traveled to Vienna on Friday as part of a central European diplomatic tour, has condemned the crackdown while acknowledging the need to develop a trans-Atlantic response.
“We haven’t settled out what the appropriate response is, but I can tell you this: We’ll work with our European friends, our freedom-loving friends here who are equally concerned about what took place,” Pompeo told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-funded outlet, on Wednesday. “We want good outcomes for the Belarusian people, and we’ll take actions consistent with that.”
European Union officials and neighboring leaders have expressed a growing interest in imposing sanctions on the individuals involved in the crackdown. Such targeted sanctions could punish the regime without interdicting oil sales from the United States to Belarus, which NATO allies hope will help wean Minsk off of its dependence on Russian energy supplies. President Trump also has nominated career foreign service officer Julie Fisher to serve as ambassador to Belarus, 12 years after Lukashenko expelled an American diplomat over human rights sanctions, but the intensifying crackdown threatens that initiative as well.
“Sending an ambassador to Minsk now, for the first time in over a decade, would signal that the United States condones these actions,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said earlier this week. “I am prepared to oppose the nomination in the Foreign Relations Committee unless it is withdrawn by the president.”
Some observers suggest that Fisher’s confirmation might aid the protesters if Pompeo framed the symbolism of her arrival appropriately.
“With these protests ongoing, having an American ambassador out and visible and talking to the opposition — giving them a little bit of top-cover, if you would, visibility — I think that would be a good thing,” said former Ambassador Kurt Volker, who was most recently the State Department’s special representative for the Ukraine crisis. “I would not at all be surprised if she would be out there and do those sorts of things and the Belarusians throw her out.”
The protests have continued despite Lukashenko’s violence, but the authoritarian leader has claimed that the demonstrators are foreigners while issuing ominous warnings.
“Don’t you go to the streets these days! You have to understand that you and our kids are used as cannon fodder!” Lukashenko said, according to state media. “An aggression against the country has been launched. … Can you tell me how a military man should react? What am I to do in this situation?”
The demonstrations expanded Friday as factory workers went on strike, but Volker warned that success against Lukashenko might bring them into a clash with an even more powerful adversary in Moscow, just as Czech protests in 1968 ended with an invasion by the Soviet Union.
“You can imagine a scenario where there is so much pressure on Lukashenko that the Russians convince him to ask for assistance, and then, Russia moves in with military force and puts down the protests themselves,” Volker said.
