Minsk Express. Power and vertical in Belarus

Minsky Express Hello and welcome to the Minsky Express, a podcast about Belarus as a place and as an idea today, which is produced by the Eastern Europe Study Center in cooperation with the Lithuanian National Radio, LRT. My name is Maximus Milda and I'm an associate expert at the Eastern Europe Study Center in Vilnius. In today's episode, I'll talk to Brian Whitmore, an assistant professor of practice at the Magdavol Center for Global Studies of the University of Texas Arlington and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. Before that, Brian was a senior Russia analyst for Radio for Europe, Radio Liberty, where he worked for 11 years. Finally, Brian is a founder of the Power Vertical Block and Podcast, which I strongly recommend to all of our listeners to follow. What is the Lukashenko's dilemma? Will the Kremlin incorporate Belarus? What can the West do to release over 1500 political prisoners in Belarus? And what makes Lukashenko's Power Vertical so unique? These are some of the questions we'll discuss today. Brian, welcome to the Minsky Express. Thank you for having me. Brian, can you please describe how you develop your initial interest in Belarus? Well, I've always been interested in the former Soviet space. It's, it's, it's, I, it goes back to my, my, my time at college and grad school. But when I was in the former Soviet space, I spent most of my time in Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s. And honestly, at that time, Belarus seemed almost like this side show. But it got increasingly interesting after, after the, the, the union treaty was signed in 1997. And there was speculation that, that, that Belarus and Russia were perhaps going to merge into into one state. Now, over time, it, it became clear that the stereotypes about Belarus, about being a mere appendage of Russia were, were, were incorrect. And that Belarus is a little bit more dynamic than it was. But Belarus is important. I mean, if you just look at the map where Belarus is, it's geopolitically central, right? I mean, every war game that starts whether it's whether it's played in the West or in Russia, usually the, the, the game usually starts in Belarus, which should tell you something about Belarus's geopolitical significance. So, so yeah, it's, I've kind of crept into my interest with Belarus. It'd be, first kind of became as a, almost an adjunct to my interest in Russia and Ukraine. But now I, it's, it's clear that Belarus is extremely interesting in its own right. Why do you think there are so few people in the West whose primary focus of interest would be Belarus? Because it sounds like very often Belarus is the country that goes on the top of interest in other countries. And it seems to be a very similar pathway as you have developed while approaching Belarus. Well, it's natural in Lithuania to be interested in Belarus because it's your neighbor. It's natural in Poland to be interested in Belarus because it's your neighbor. And it, your security is directly affected by Russian efforts to annex Belarus, which, effectively, is what it's doing. It's a, I see kind of a soft annexation going on at, at this point. But in, in, in the West, it's just that it's largely, people have largely kind of viewed it as this kind of adjunct to Russia in a lot of ways. Plus the, you know, the long, the long-roll reign of, of, of Lukashenko, the feeling that Belarus is, is, is largely hopeless politically. I think that's incorrect, by the way. I think that, I think, Belarus is very much in play right now. But I think, I think that would explain it. It's just a, it's a country people other than specialists don't really pay a lot of attention to. But again, I would stress that it's an extremely, it's extremely important in its own right. I think what's remarkable about Belarus is the, the similarity in its history with Ukraine, but yet the difference in where it is politically in contrast with Ukraine. I mean, both Belarus and Ukraine have very, very similar histories. They both emerged out of Kiev and Rus. They both were part of the Polish, Lithuanian, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth. Both were absorbed into the Russian Empire in the late 18th century. Both had this brief period of independence following 1917, then incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922. Both gained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. So if you look at that, you'd expect Belarus to look a lot like Ukraine. And this is one of the questions I often like posed to my students. What explains the difference between Belarus and Ukraine? Rousification efforts were a lot more successful in Belarus, and that's for sure. But I think if you look at it this way, you, you think Belarus could be the next Ukraine. Because its history is remarkably similar, but I, I'll get into that more going forward. And perhaps even geographically, if we look on the border that Belarus shares with EU and NATO member states, it's more or less equal to what Ukraine shares. It's all around 700, 800 miles, right? Right, and then, but the other side of the coin is that Belarus and Ukraine, when you look at, when Moscow looks at it, they view them as vital to their strategic depth. Strategic depth, of course, is this concept that the Russian strategists are obsessed with. This idea of having kind of obedient satellite states on the Western border, and the two most important countries for Russia are Belarus and Ukraine, by virtue of that proximity to NATO and the European Union. Right, last year in one of the publications that you've produced for the Atlantic Council, you stated and I quote that with Lukashenko, it's often difficult to separate signal from the noise end of quote. Is this ambiguity a strategic advantage of Lukashenko, you were saying, or on the contrary, it's his strategic weakness? I mean, I just think it is what it is. I mean, Lukashenko lets face it as a pretty eccentric guy. And he just, he will say things. And sometimes he will say things because that has been scripted for him to say, and it's part of some kind of larger sigh-op or disinformation operation of the Kremlin. And sometimes it's just Lukashenko popping off. And that's what I meant by that phrase. It's difficult to separate the signal from the noise. I'm not sure if it's if it's an advantage or not for him. It's certainly something the Kremlin uses. When Lukashenko says something crazy, it gets people's attention in the West. And often that is part of that that can play into kind of Moscow's disinformation and sigh-op campaigns in order to achieve their goals. I mean, look at the recent issue of moving these tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus, something that has absolutely no strategic or tactical advantage. But what it did was it got the West attention and got everybody thinking about nukes, which got everybody worried about escalation, which got everybody questioning whether we should continue to support Ukraine, which is exactly what Putin wants. Sometimes the eccentricity of Lukashenko kind of plays into a kind of a broader Kremlin strategy. And sometimes it doesn't. I mean, Lukashenko has said things which I'm sure annoyed the Kremlin. I'm remembering you're calling back in 2014 when he said that Russia's claims to the so-called Novodosia, no new Russia, that Mongolia can make similar claims on Russia. I'm sure that wasn't received very well in the Kremlin. Now, was that signaling something about Lukashenko breaking with the Kremlin at that time? Or was it just Lukashenko being Lukashenko? And the fact of the matter is we just don't know if to take each of these on a case by case basis. Correct. And also Lukashenko now is every now and then to share a joke or anecdote about Putin and himself in different life situations. So this is perhaps what bringing him closer to Prime Minister Rama of Albania, who also likes to tell jokes about Putin. Well, but you know, looking now in a more or less like zoomed out position on Belarus and it's political regime that has been constructed by Lukashenko, how would you describe it? Can we find a category to somehow comparisonize this political regime in the broader universe of orthocracies? Is it a Stalinist vassal state? Is it some sort of a military junta run colony? Or in other words, what's overall power vertical of Belarus in your opinion? Well, I mean, I think this is in flux right now. This has been changing since 2020, prior to 2020, prior to August 2020, the elections and Belarus that were contested, obviously rigged, the protests that followed, Lukashenko's crackdown, that changed things entirely because before that, yeah, you had an authoritarian regime in Belarus. And you had an authoritarian regime that violated human rights, although before 2020, if you remember correctly, Lukashenko was trying to make overtures to the west, right? He was, he was, he was, he was seemed to be trying to distance himself to a degree from Russia. And there was a debate in the West ever whether that was some kind of tactical move by him or whether there was something real there. It was something the West kind of did react to. But Lukashenko refused to allow at the time for Russia to build a new airbase in Belarus. He was resisting calls for for for for a Russian military presence, if you remember correctly. So at that time, that was a different Belarus in a lot of ways. It was a Belarus that even where in some quarters of the opposition, they had made it uneasy alliance with with with Lukashenko because they feared Russia more than they feared him. There was a fear that if you overthrew Lukashenko, then you would be faced with what Ukraine was facing in the in the Belarusian opposition was was was leery of that. Everything changed in August 2020 because Lukashenko by the by fixing the elections and my cracking down on on the protests with Putin's encouragement and with Putin's assistance, it created a situation where Lukashenko had no place else to go but Putin, no place else to go but Russia. And ever since that time, ever since August 2020, Russia has been steadily expanding its military footprints in Belarus, steadily expanding its economic footprints in Belarus, steadily expanding its political footprints in Belarus. It's a process that I referred to as a soft annexation where right now the question, it's a legitimate question to ask, does Belarus actually have its own agency right now? If you ask me that question in July of 2020, I would have said, yeah, Belarus has agency, but now I'm not sure about that. I'm seeing if to to to look at your categories here, I mean a solidest vessel stage is the closest to what we have, but I would be careful about thinking that this is where it's going to stay in perpetuity because I mean there's different ways of looking at Belarus. One way of looking at it is that it is completely hopeless. The political system is completely authoritarian, completely under the control of Lukashenko. Russia's expanding its footprint there and expanding its influence. The the Russian military rotations in Belarus kind of created a almost a permanent true presence there. New bases are indeed now being built. And so in that sense, you look at it and it's you think of it as completely hopeless. But if you look at the other side of where Belarusian society has gone since since August of 2020 and you see it moving increasingly west, you see that the attitudes toward toward Russia are becoming more and more negative than they were before. You're seeing Belarusians kind of look to their their European past in history, an interesting poll that really caught my attention. Ask Belarusians to name the historical period that they should draw inspiration from and the number one choice was the was the the grand Duchy of Lithuania followed by the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Very last on this list was the Soviet Union. So that tells me that that that Belarusian society is changing and that Belarus isn't you know, it's not quite Ukraine yet in that sense, but it really could be in the place where Poland was in the early days of solidarity. So I think that there is a real possibility going forward that Belarus could be in play. Now this is there's a lot of this is contingent on a lot of things. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine decisively, which I think they will be, that's going to decrease Moscow's ability to project power and that could possibly put Belarus in play. Well, let's follow up because I have a number of issues that I'd like to to respond to your to to ask more. First, perhaps with the Lukashenko's relationship with the West, we all of course recall even Secretary Pompeo visited Belarus in 2020, right, and many other officials not only from EU, but also from the sea that all has gone, right, after 2020. But at the same time, talking about agency of Belarus or absence of agency as such, isn't it in the West's dilemma how to deal with Lukashenko as at least as some form of buffer between those 700 miles of border that NATO has with Belarus and actual Kremlin, or just it's better to stand by watching how Belarus is completely erased from the map. Now, I've been on both sides of this of this debate. Prior to August 2020, I was arguing that that Lukashenko is never going to be our ally. We can forget about that, right? This is pre-August 2020. But it is definitely in the West's interest, in the West's collective interest, that Belarus remain free from Russia, that Russian influence in Belarus be minimized to the most of the greatest extent possible. At that time, it seemed to me to possibly make that it made sense to court Lukashenko. The Cold War analogy that I always drew about this was Chuchesky's Romania, right? During the Cold War, Chuchesky was something of a pain in the ass to the Kremlin. Romania was playing its own game, it was developing its own relations with the West, it was developing its own relations with China, and that this strategically worked to the West's advantage. That was the way I viewed it pre-August 2020. Bearing in mind that yes, this is somebody who's never going to be our ally, and we should play a long game to foster potential political change in Belarus. But in the short run, if there was a wedge between Lukashenko and Putin, and there was, I mean, a make no mistake that two men do not like each other. In fact, they're rumored to despise each other. I saw an opportunity, and I actually testified before the Helsinki Commission, making this argument in November of 2019, that there's a possible window of opportunity with Belarus, after August 2020, and particularly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in last February, that has changed utterly, because in addition to this soft annexation of Belarus, we saw Russia using Belarus as a staging area to launch attacks against Ukraine, and it was became completely legitimate to question whether Lukashenko does indeed have agency. I mean, there was a time when you could kind of do the cremlinology of Belarus, and kind of look at the elite, and see different factions. There was a time when the foreign minister, McCay, was seen as pro-Western, now he has since passed away, and he turned out to not to be so pro-Western, as we saw going forward, and Shunevich was seen as more pro-Russian, the former interior minister. Those days are gone now. It looks a lot more kind of monolithic now, and that changes the way the West approaches it. Right now, I think we need to treat Belarus as a combatant in the war against Ukraine, and I think the sanctions are kind of reflecting that. I don't think we should have dealings with this regime right now. I think that ship is sale, but I think we've got to play the long game with Belarusian civil society, because I think there's a real, real opportunity there. Well, before we move to Belarusian civil society, let's also touch upon Lukashenko's relationship with cremlin, and more specifically with something that you actually started your conversation about how you developed interest in Belarus, the union state, or the zombie union state of some form. Now, the integration road maps before 2020 were used by Lukashenko's regime also to consolidate Belarusian society, and including the Belarusian democratic opposition. But, nevertheless, in 2021, Lukashenko signed them all, all the 28 or whatever is the number of them. Do you see union state as a form that actually will be used by cremlin to eventually incorporate Belarus, or what has remained of Belarus in Russia? I mean, I think it's possible. I mean, in the past, the way the Belarusian-Russian relationship, I would characterize it as follows. Putin saw the relationship as imperial. That's the way Putin sees every relationship in the former Soviet space, but particularly with Belarus, he saw the relationship as imperial. You're the vassal and I am the lord. Lukashenko didn't see that that way. Lukashenko saw it as transactional. I'll be your ally if you, and so this tension, this very uneasy kind of shotgun marriage between Lukashenko and it was really, really dysfunctional. Now, that has changed because Belarus has no place else to go. It has no place else to go, and I think it's going to go where Putin wants to take it. Now, my theory going into 2022, as I was watching the side of soft annexation that Russia was engaging in with Belarus, the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, and the notion that Putin is actually very, very conscious of anniversaries, and 2022 was the centenary of the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, and we saw the soft annexation of Belarus moving forward. We saw the union state finally appearing to move forward, and we saw Russia gearing up to invade Ukraine, and I thought at that point, we could see if Russia were more successful in Ukraine. I could have seen a scenario where Belarus, where Russia would have simply absorbed Belarus. Now, I'm not sure, so sure Russia's got its hands full in Ukraine, although I think it's possible, although the reaction in society, we really don't know what that would be, because Belarusian society is becoming increasingly suspicious of Russia. It's a long way of saying I don't know, but I think this is something that Russia wants to have in its pocket. That's a trigger you can only pull once. It's something I think that Putin likes having in his pocket to leverage for geopolitical advantage going forward, but I think it is entirely possible. Then the big variable there is how does Belarusian civil society respond to that? Right, and one of the proposals of Belarusian civil society in responding to Kremlin's policy towards Belarus is to declare Belarus as a state under temporary military occupation. Well, how do you understand that? Call, do you see Russia now in doing so? And how would you explain it? Well, no, I think that that is accurate. Belarus is a state that is under de facto military occupation with the willing participation of its president, but I think that's where we are right now, and I think that's a good way to look at Belarus. I mean, I think we have to be careful about looking at Belarus as just this extension of Russia. I think Belarus is a separate nation with its own history, separate from Russia, but the facts on the ground at the moment, and this is why I like the kind of military occupation formulation of that, because it implies that the Belarusian people are not the willing participants in if the regime is, but I think that's an accurate way to characterize it, and I think the civil society is right to call for that to be how this is characterized. Now, talking about Putin's eagerness to use any commemoration or any particular data to the needs of the regime, there is another important data that is coming for Kremlin, and these are the so-called presidential elections of 2024, and of course, there are no democratic elections in Russia, but there is some form of the ritual that needs to take place, and to utilize that once again to indoctrinate the society of the country. Now, often we've seen that that period of so-called electoral campaign would not result in any rush moves, so perhaps giving some buffer of relatively calm time for Lukashenko. Do you see that as a real chance for Lukashenko to breathe in, breathe out, or it doesn't matter, and after 2022, wearing a new status quo and those elections do not matter at all for Lukashenko? I mean, I think we're pretty much in a new status quo. These elections may be interesting just simply because of the first elections that I'll be taking place after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The regime is a bit nervous about this at this point. You're right that elections are used in Russia as kind of legitimization rituals. They're also used as mobilization exercises to test the regime's ability to mobilize, and so I think, I mean, these are the things to kind of watch for in those elections, but the period before an election isn't always uneventful. Recall Putin's first election back in 1999, back in 2000, that was preceded by a bombing campaign in Russia that killed 300 people, right? A false flag operation that Russia blamed on the Chechens and was used to effectively shore up his authority. So I don't rule out some kind of operation for the elections. You're right in recent times, the elections had the period prior to the elections. The elite is pretty much preoccupied with preparing for the elections, preparing for this ritual, preparing for this mobilization exercise. Will that give Lukashenko some breathing room? I'm not sure because the people that are working on that are not the same people that are working on the elections, right? It's different. You have different parts of the elite working on these different things. I think that Russia is going to be very vigilant about keeping Belarus under its thumb right now because Belarus for the Kremlin is one of the two key countries in what Moscow considers to be its strategic depth. So I'm not sure that there will see some window of opportunity there. And quite frankly, I'm not sure Lukashenko wants to take this window of opportunity, right? Anything we see is going to be in civil society. Any action in Belarus is going to be coming from civil society. Any positive political change is going to originate with civil society, not with a regime. You mentioned the necessity to distinguish between Belarus and Russia to distinguish between people of Belarus and people of Russia. And one of the distinctions that I often provide is actually the role that citizens of Belarus contribute when it comes to Russia's war in Ukraine. And more specifically, they're actually fighting for Ukraine. They are fighting for Ukraine in hundreds, if not thousands. And this is clearly something that is very vivid and tangible. It demonstrates the standing of Belarusians. But at the same time, do you see any potential threats or an unexpected spillovers that this Belarusian military units might produce for more moderate democratic forces, like Svetlana Tsihanovska and others? Perhaps they might call for more robust, more, let's say, aggressive way of taking over power in Minsk and getting rid of Lukashenko? Well, as you said, the only Belarusians fighting in Ukraine are fighting on the Ukrainian side. And I think that's encouraging, and I think that speaks very well of the Belarusian people in where they are at in this war. I mean, Belarusians have extremely warm feelings towards Ukraine. They did not want to be part of this war. But I guess you're asking, can those military units that number in the hundreds of soldiers, basically, could they become a political force inside Belarus? I think it's possible. I don't think they have the numbers to challenge the Belarusian state. Certainly, they don't have the numbers to challenge Russia in Belarus right now. But I think that, yeah, the fact that this is happening and that Belarusians are willing to fight for democracy in Ukraine also suggests that someday they might be willing to fight for democracy in Belarus. Another extremely dire aspect of Lukashenko's rule, and particularly now, of course, is the immense amount of political prisoners that are kept essentially hostages in Belarus. And there are over 1,500 of them. And perhaps there are many of extremely renowned people among them, but one of them in 2022 has even received a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm talking about Aleys Belatsky, the founder of Spring 96. Perhaps the strongest human rights organization in Belarus. And despite the Nobel Prize, despite this horrific amount of political prisoners in Belarus, we see hardly any international spotlight for any urgency to release political prisoners. Do you see any potential tangible way how U.S. and the European Union could contribute to releasing these people from captivity that are held now? Well, in the current condition, the West doesn't have a lot of leverage. Remember back in 2015, Lukashenko released a bunch of political prisoners as he was making his overtures to the West. In that atmosphere, the West had leverage. Right now, the West doesn't have a lot of leverage, and all we can really do is just keep putting the spotlight on it. And people are paying attention to this in Western governments. People are paying attention to this in the U.S. State Department and people are paying attention to this in Europe. But our leverage to do anything about it is extremely limited. And it goes without saying that any sanctions relief that Belarus would ever receive has to be contingent upon all of the political prisoners being released. But the fact that right now, we just don't have a lot of leverage. Lukashenko is not prioritizing to say the least his relations with the West right now. Now, this used to not be the case back in 2015. We did get political prisoners released as a result of kind of Lukashenko kind of making overtures to the West. I don't see that happening in the short term right now. So I think all we can really really do is just keep the sanctions pressure up on the regime and keep putting a spotlight on the political prisoners. Does that mean that soon to turn 30 years long rule of Lukashenko essentially demonstrates that impunity is unimpeachable? It is until it's not, right? It is until it's not. I mean, the thing about regimes like Lukashenko is as they look rock solid until the moment that they are not rock solid. And I think we could, we could be, you know, everything right now is so contingent on the outcome of the war in Ukraine. And in the event of a Ukrainian victory, we did not see the breakthrough this summer that we had hoped to see in the counteroffensive, but we could see that going forward. I think Ukraine's going to win this war eventually. It's just a question of when. And when that happens, the Lukashenko regime is going to be on very, very, very shaky ground. And when this regime finally falls, then I think there will be accountability. So like I said, yeah, the impunity is unimpeachable until it's not. And finally, having realized that after 2020, there are over 100,000, perhaps 150,000 Belarusians, at least who are living in the European Union and elsewhere. Do you think it's possible for Belarusians to use this time to build essentially democracy in exile? Well, I think they are doing that. I think they are doing that. You just have to go to Vilnius to see it, right? You use the Belarusian diaspora specifically in Lithuania, but not exclusively in Lithuania. There's a Belarusian diaspora here in the States as well. There's a Belarusian diaspora in Poland and elsewhere. And I think, yeah, and I think a lot of credit goes, this is a lot of economic offscath, for fostering this. I think we right now kind of have a government in exile. And we have kind of a Belarusian democratic society in exile. And I think that they, yeah, that they are doing exactly what they should be doing. And I support them wholeheartedly. Brian, thank you very much for joining Minsk Express today. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to Minsk Express and following the East and Europe Studies Center. Please, leave us a review and subscribe to our podcast to receive new episodes of Minsk Express. You can find all of our episodes via allergy.plt in the Radoteca of the Lithuanian National Radio and through all streaming platforms. See you next time.