Who is Behind Reports of a Coup Plot in Belarus?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 30 – Coups and even more reported coup plots are typically murky affairs with one group suggesting someone is planning a real coup, a second that the regime itself is behind the reports in order to justify further repression, and still a third saying a foreign power is involved to overthrow the regime or remind that regime how much it needs that foreign power.

            All three versions are now on offer in the case of some developments in Belarus, and there are likely to be more such offerings in the coming days especially because the reports of a coup plot in Minsk have surfaced at exactly the same time that Vladimir Putin has unexpectedly replaced his ambassador to Belarus.

            It is entirely possible that the real story will never be known – or at least never be accepted by everyone given all the equities involved. But it is worth tracing what is known so far to provide something of a baseline for assessing what may be said later or for analyzing what is going on in Belarus more generally.

            A week ago, Belarusian and Russian media report, Andrey Vtyurin, the deputy head of Belarus’ Security Council, was arrested by the Belarusian KGB on suspicion of taking bribes. He has been close to Lukashenka for a long time, having been head of the Belarusian president’s personal guard between 2007 and 2014 (iarex.ru/news/66198.html).

            Vtyurin’s arrest was not announced by the authorities but instead reported to the media by his friends.   That has led to speculation that his arrest was related to the exposure of a conspiracy at the top of the Belarusian military and security services to topple Lukashenka or at least prevent him from being reelected (iarex.ru/news/66208.html).

            According to some versions of the story, the plotters were connected with Moscow; according to others, they were acting on behalf of one of Lukashenka’s own children; and according to still others, the whole plot was dreamed up by Lukashenka to justify a further crackdown. (On this, see the Trykatazh telegram channel report at t.me/trktgh/776.)

            Vladimir Putin’s replacement of ambassadors in Minsk has only deepened the mystery, given that Russian outlets who supported Mikhail Babich’s activist approach in Minsk are now working overtime to deny any Russian involvement, dismiss the possibilities of a domestic coup, and promote the version that Lukashenka came up with the idea for his own reasons.

            Yury Baranchik of the Rex news agency is one of their number. He argues that there is no one near the top of the Belarusian security services capable of organizing a coup, that Lukashenka’s children can’t do so either because no one would recognize them, and that most likely Lukashenka dreamed the whole thing up (iarex.ru/articles/66209.html).

                In his words, “the version about an attempted coup is an effort by official Minsk on the basis of nothing to seriously tighten the screws on the domestic political space given the serious deterioration of the social-economic situation in the country. Lukashenka needed an occasion and he found one.” 

            Needless to say, Baranchik, a big supporter of Babich, doesn’t consider the possibility that Moscow might be involved. But that possibility can’t be dismissed. If in fact Lukashenka found evidence that the Russian embassy was behind this plot or associated with it in any way, that could explain why Putin moved Babich so quickly after protecting him so long.

            If the Belarusian president could reasonably threaten Putin with exposure of a Russian-orchestrated plot against him, Putin might have sacked Babich so as to deflect blame onto his ambassador and thus suggest to Lukashenka that Moscow was his protector not his enemy and keep hope alive for a rapprochement between Moscow and Minsk.

            Again, none of this is known or perhaps can ever be known.  But decisions are taken and policies advanced not on the basis of what is true but on the basis of what leaders and their advisors believe. With these multiple versions floating around, the situations in both Moscow and Minsk and in their relations with each other are likely to become even more unpredictable.

           

Is Handing Out Passports in the Donbass Putin’s Solution to Russia’s Demographic Collapse?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 30 – Vladimir Putin’s decision to offer Russian citizenship to those living in Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine and possibly others as well may be intended not only to extend Russian power over that country further but also to help solve Russia’s demographic collapse, according to a Russian blogger who writes under the screen name Father Frost.

            He suggests that the extremely negative demographic figures of recent moths mean that “the massive distribution of passports may be the only way to save [Russia] from withering away altogether” (cont.ws/@Ded-Moroz/1310165 reposted at newizv.ru/article/general/30-04-2019/stranu-ot-vymiraniya-spaset-tolko-massovaya-razdacha-pasportov).

            If Russian government claims that 86 percent of the population in Russian-occupied portions of the Donbass (meduza.io/news/2019/04/30/mvd-rf-86-zhiteley-donbassa-hotyat-poluchit-rossiyskoe-grazhdanstvo) are correct, this policy would immediately produce some two million new Russian citizens and be a boost to the country’s total population.

            Many analysts had concluded that the declining number of women in the prime child-bearing ages and declining birthrates present Russia with an almost intractable problem especially given that the number of immigrants has fallen sharply, Father Frost says. But it turns out that this all can be solved not just by falsification of data but by “the stroke of a pen.”

            That falsification is going on, the blogger suggests, is indicated by the increasing delays with which Rosstat releases population figures and by the way state-controlled media bury them in their reports and publications. But now there are going to be hundreds of thousands of new Russians, produced instantly by Putin’s decision.

            The question, however, is how these are going to be counted – and when the government will release the numbers.  When Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea, Moscow more or less immediately included the population there within that of the Russian Federation to improve its demographic situation. 

Will it do the same with the Donbass? Or will some other calculation intervene?  Father Frost provides no guidance on that.

Putin Always Responds to Problems Not by Changing Course but by Increasing Control, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 30 – In small ways and large, Sergey Shelin says, Vladimir Putin responds to unexpected problems not by changing the policies that produced them but by increasing his control by requiring more reporting or by tightening the screws.  His new decree on “assessing the effectiveness” of federal subject heads is a classic example of this.

            But that approach, the Rosbalt commentator says, has the effect in this case as well as in others of exacerbating the tensions between the Kremlin leader, his officials, and the population rather than resolving anything, however much he and the Presidential Administration believe otherwise (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2019/04/29/1778845.html).

                The new decree requires more reports about gubernatorial effectiveness, but two things about it show that it is about anything but that. On the one hand, it rates the regional heads on things that are not under the constitution and the law their responsibilities. And on the other, it relies on statistical measures that can at best give a spurious sense of accuracy.

            The key part of this decree is its first point, the one calling for evaluating governors in terms of “the level of trust to the powers that be (the president of the Russian Federation and higher officials of the subjects of the Russian Federation).” There is no reference to the Duma or local assemblies, let alone to the people who are supposed to be the source of all power.

            This highlights “one of the most interesting paradoxes” of the Putin system: “The bosses of the regions are formally elected by the people. That is, theoretically, they are responsible to the voters. But in fact, their selection, promotion and subsequent removal is the business of the will of the most high.”

            Russians have long been accustomed to the situation in which those whom they supposedly elect look first and often exclusively to those who really appointed them rather than to the people. But lately, many of them are demanding that their governors pay attention to their needs. The new decree won’t end that trend; it will only make the contradiction more obvious.

            Moreover, the decree’s requirement that there be reporting on “the level of trust to the powers that” has nothing to do with “the real attitudes of people.” It is simply a line in a report, like all the other lines in the additional paperwork this decree requires. “Real conflicts and difficulties won’t be included.” Indeed, this is a way for further ignoring them.

                Perhaps the only good thing one can say about this new decree, Shelin implies, is that it makes clear what many have long assumed to be the case: Putin doesn’t trust the people and doesn’t want his governors to do so either. And because it makes that clear, the decree will cause ever more people to draw the necessary conclusions about his system.