Putin ‘More Dangerous Enemy of Belarus than Lukashenka Is,’ Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 10 – Russians, Belarusians and the world need to recognize that at the present time, Vladimir Putin is “a more dangerous enemy of Belarus” than Alyaksandr Lukashenka, because it is on the Kremlin leader’s “money, lies and bayonets that the regime of the bloody Luka” rests. Igor Eidman adds that “the enemy is now coming from the East.”

            Many don’t understand that and the leaders of the Belarusian opposition don’t understand something else: society in Russia has absolutely no impact on Kremlin decision making, the Moscow sociologist says (gordonua.com/blogs/eydman/putin-seychas-vrag-belarusi-opasnee-lukashenko-imenno-na-ego-dengah-lzhi-i-shtykah-derzhitsya-rezhim-krovavogo-luki-1517613.html).

            Many Russians are sympathetic to the Belarusians in the streets, Eidman says; but they cannot do anything to really help them. Both the Belarusians and people in the West need to understand that as well rather than hoping that Putin will be restrained by opposition to whatever he chooses to do in Belarus or elsewhere. 

            Because that is so and because the West is not prepared to go to the map to stop him, Putin “will step by step swallow Belarus in the manner of technological Petersburg raiders: first, he will install his own management, then, he will put in those to protect them, and then will privatize, that is, annex, the country.”

            And as a result, if the revolution the Belarusians have begun fails, the Belarusian people “after a year or two will find themselves under the double oppression of their own and Russian ruling bandits. Many Belarusians will lose their jobs at the enterprises privatized and ‘optimized’ by Russian oligarchs, and they will have to forget about freedom and Europe for a long time.

            Indeed, Eidman says, “an iron curtain of Moscow’s Asiatic empire is descending over Belarus.”