Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 27 – It has been a
core part of Vladimir Putin’s message for more than a decade that Russia is
surrounded by enemies and that they are seeking to promote instability inside
his country, but he generally has identified major Western countries as the
guilty parties rather than any state closer to home.
Now, according to Svetlana Gamova, a
political observer for NG-Dipkuryer,
some former Soviet republics have become an even more immediate threat; and she
calls for “closing in a reliable fashion” the borders the Russian Federation
shares with these countries (ng.ru/dipkurer/2017-03-27/9_6958_belorus.html).
What makes her article so intriguing
is that she implicitly recalls the situation at the end of the Soviet period
when the revolutions in the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Armenia
played a key role in powering the upsurge of anti-communist and anti-Soviet
attitudes among Russians.
What is taking place in Belarus now,
Gamova says, shows the baselessness of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s claims that his
country is “island of stability” and that no Maidan like the one in Ukraine can
ever happen, even as Belarusians are taking their cues from Ukrainian activists
and as Ukrainians are preparing to send armed people into Belarus.
The Belarusian leader, she
continues, “has told the population about camps for the preparation of
militants in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and what is most surprising in Belarus
itself. How given the vigilance of the Belarusian
KGB in which Lukashenka has assured the citizens of his country could such
special camps arise?”
Lukashenka’s
argument that there can’t be a Maidan in Belarus ultimately reduces to one that
insists that is impossible because it is impossible. (Similar kinds of arguments
are made in and about Russia too. See, for example, politnavigator.net/sem-prichin-pochemu-pobeda-majjdana-v-minske-i-moskve-nevozmozhna.html.)
But “it turns out,” the NG-Dipkuryer
observer says, that “everything is possible” especially now that new social
groups are coming out behind the small Belarusian opposition and because “all
those who want to change the regime in that country” are taking advantage of the
new situation in Belarus.
Fearful that the Ukrainians would
dispatch units to help the Belarusian protesters, Lukashenka’s regime stepped
up its control of the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, something Minsk has not done
on the Belarusian-Russian border. There
anyone can pass without being checked at all.
“All this leaves the citizens of
Russian defenseless both from the side of Belarusians and from the side of
Ukrainians,” Gamova says.
The average Russia doesn’t care
where militants, terrorists, or activists come from, “east or west.” He cares
only that such people be blocked from entering the country and disturbing his
life and that of his family. For that,
serious borders are needed, including with Ukraine and now Belarus.
The Belarusian-Russian borders
should have been fortified long ago, because the transit of aliens “under the
form of Belarusians must stop just like the export of Polish apples.” The same
thing is true of the Russian-Ukrainian border.
But unfortunately, those are not now the only borders in the post-Soviet
space across which instability can come.
Kyrgyzstan, the commentator
continues, is a problem because “instability is exported along with goods and
workers. And this too is the occasion for concern of Russian citizens and the
increase in the vigilance of our special services which we hope are not
sleeping. And there are problems at least potentially with Moldova
“Thus, it has turned out,” Gamova
concludes, “that we live in a region of instability and under conditions of
intensifying security threats for the population of our country. Not to take
this into consideration and continuing to hope that we are united by a common
past or a common future in the form of integration structures, is a mistake.”
More to the point, she says, it is “a
mistake which can change many things [and] unfortunately not in [Russia’s]
favor.”
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