Paul Goble
Staunton,
October 4 – Belsat, the independent Belarusian news agency based in Poland,
says that a Minsk resident has told its journalists on conditions of anonymity
that “a month ago, a Russian sociological center commissioned Belarusian
research agencies to conduct several polls” (belsat.eu/ru/in-focus/v-kremle-hotyat-znat-chto-belorusy-dumayut-o-tesnom-soyuze-s-rossiej/).
One of the polls, the station’s
source said, was to be among young people and the second, “a larger one, among
people of all ages, in all cities and in some villages” of Belarus. The focus of
the poll, he continued, was how Belarusians would react to a possible union of
their country with the Russian Federation.
There has been no independent
confirmation of these polls as yet. But even
the suggestion that Moscow is ordering up such surveys may indicate that officials
in the Russian capital want to know what they will be up against if they make a
move toward an Ancshluss of Belarus – or even suggest that it is querying on
this as a provocation.
There are, of course, at least two
other possibilities. On the one hand, some: Belarusians opposed to such a union
and to the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka may have put out this story in order
to mobilize people against what this certainly looks like, another step by
Moscow against Minsk.
Or on the other, this idea real or
otherwise may have emanated from the Lukashenka regime itself, either to provide
it with ammunition for talks with Moscow or to ferret out additional information
about the attitudes of the Belarusian people toward a possible union in more
detail.
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