Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 21 – Because the
money is running out and because Russia can no longer make up the difference,
Alyaksandr Lukashenka faces a situation he neither expected nor knows how to
respond to, one in which not the nationalists but his own electorate has turned
against him, Vitaly Portnikov says.
What the Minsk dictator will do next
is “unknown,” the Ukrainian commentator says, adding the critical observation
that everyone should be watching what happens in Lukashenka’s country not only
for its own sake but because of what it says about what may happen in Vladimir
Putin’s Russia (7days.us/vitalij-portnikov-marsh-razdrazhennyx-i-budushhee-belarusi-i-rossii/).
“In Russia,” as in Belarus, “the
government’s resources are also approaching exhaustion – and social protests
are not far distant,” Portnikov says. And
thus, “Putin also will have to react to protests from his own electorate and
not in Moscow” but in the Russian Federation’s far-flung regions and republics.
For Putin, he argues, “this will be
much more terrible” and terrifying that protests however large in Moscow’s
public squares.
Thus, “if Lukashenka collapses,
Putin will collapse as well because Russia is similar to Belarus from the
political point of view and not the reverse. Moscow learned from Minsk
nostalgia for things Soviet and for authoritarianism” as such. Indeed, for Putin, Belarus like Tatarstan and
Chechnya earlier is a testing ground.
Consequently, “if Lukashenka is able
to find a model for survival in poverty – from repression to playing with the
opposition,” Portnikov suggests, “Putin almost certainly will use this approach
to save himself.” That makes the protests across Belarus far more important
than many now see them.
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