Putin’s Russia Loses Another ‘Fraternal’ Country – Lukashenka’s Belarus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 25 – In yet another indication that Vladimir Putin is driving away even those countries in the post-Soviet space that he assumes are inevitably on his side, Alyaksandr Lukashenka says that he will cease to call Russia “a fraternal state” because that is now how Russia sees things.

            The two countries, the Belarusian leader said yesterday, remain “partners;” but in the Russian political lexicon, that is a much more distant and variable relationship than the former (president.gov.by/ru/news_ru/view/soveschanie-po-aktualnym-voprosam-sotrudnichestva-s-rossiej-20124/).

            Tensions between Moscow and Minsk have been rising of late, with Belarusians expressing their commitment to remain independent of Russia regardless of their need for subsidies from Moscow and Russians expressing anger that Minsk insist on such independence given that the two countries are at least nominally part of a “union state.”