Why Turmoil in Belarus Is Spilling Over Its Borders

(Bloomberg) -- For 27 years, President Alexander Lukashenko has held onto power in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, using increasingly repressive methods. His critics and opponents have gotten louder, and more prominent, since Lukashenko claimed a sixth term following a disputed election in August 2020. Mass arrests, the forced grounding of a European Union flight and an Olympic sprinter fleeing the team to seek asylum in Poland have all focused international attention on the simmering crisis on the EU’s border.

1. Why is opposition to Lukashenko so strong?

Discontent with Lukashenko, in office since Belarus’s first presidential election as an independent republic in 1994, has simmered for years as the state-dominated economy stagnated. Called “Europe’s last dictator,” Lukashenko has received financial and political support from Russia and repeatedly repressed political dissent. Unrest in the East European country of 9.3 million people, sandwiched between Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and Russia, intensified with the coronavirus outbreak, after the president rejected lockdown measures to slow the epidemic and dismissed health fears.

2. What happened in the 2020 election?

Lukashenko, who’s accustomed to landslide victories, appeared to be playing it safe by having key challengers detained or kept off the ballot. But Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice and wife of a jailed opposition blogger, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was allowed to register. She drew huge crowds at rallies nationwide. So when officials declared Lukashenko had won 80.2% of the vote with just 9.9% in her favor, public anger boiled over at suspected ballot fraud. Thousands took to the streets nightly in more than 30 towns and cities, defying riot police and calling for nationwide strikes. More than 6,000 people were detained in the first three nights alone, sparking international condemnation, and Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania.

3. What’s happened since then?

Belarusian authorities opened at least 4,600 criminal cases against opponents of Lukashenko. In July, Belarus’s Supreme Court sentenced the former head of a Kremlin-controlled bank who sought to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 election to 14 years in jail. Other activists, including Tsikhanouskaya’s husband and Maria Kalesnikava, who was prominent in the opposition’s campaign, have also gone on trial while many more are being kept under investigation in overcrowded remand prisons. In August 2021, police in Ukraine opened a murder probe after finding Belarusian opposition activist Vitaliy Shishov hanged in a Kyiv park, saying they were investigating whether his death was staged to look like a suicide.

4. Why has the world taken notice?

A Belarusian sprinter, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, said she was pressured to leave the Olympic Games in Tokyo early for criticizing sporting officials from her country. Tsimanouskaya, who was taken to the airport against her will, was afraid to return home, where Lukashenko’s son Viktor runs the Olympic committee, and refused to board her flight. She sought protection and wound up receiving a visa to go to Poland. In May, a Ryanair Holdings Plc plane flying from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where authorities arrested a passenger, journalist Raman Pratasevich, who rose to prominence covering the 2020 protests. He was detained with his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen. Lithuania, which has offered shelter to many opposition figures from Belarus, accuses Lukashenko of channeling thousands of migrants, mainly from Iraq, across their border and is now planning to build a 508-kilometer (316-mile) fence to stop the flow.

5. What’s been the response?

The U.S., EU and U.K. all imposed sanctions on Belarus following the Ryanair incident and other developments. The EU measures hit petroleum products and potash fertilizers, the country’s two main sources of foreign-currency revenue, while the U.S. also targeted a Belarusian state-owned potash producer, the country’s Olympic committee, and business leaders and companies with ties to Lukashenko. The U.K. has barred Belarusian airlines from overflying or landing in the U.K. and prohibited purchases of transferable securities and money-market instruments issued by the Belarusian state.

6. Who sides with Lukashenko?

Facing further sanctions and economic strain, Lukashenko has turned to his closest ally, Vladimir Putin. The Russian president offered him loans, energy supplies and, if needed, police support. Yet Putin has also shown a dislike for Lukashenko, whom Russia tried to undermine in elections in 2010, according to Kataryna Wolczuk, a Russia specialist at Chatham House, a London think tank. Putin’s personal preference became irrelevant once street protests began, something he was not going to allow to succeed so close to home as Belarus. Russia views Belarus as perhaps its closest ally, a critical buffer against encroachment by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and EU toward its borders. Belarus was preparing for large-scale war games with Russia on its territory amid the mounting tensions with Lithuania. 

The Reference Shelf

• A Bloomberg article on the seizing of Pratasevich and a story on EU sanctions.
• An Associated Press report on Olympic athlete Tsimanouskaya’s return to Europe.
• A Bloomberg report on Lithuania’s plans for a border fence.
• The post-election response and crackdown, and EU and U.S. reaction.
• A Businessweek profile of Tsikhanouskaya.
• A New York Times analysis of Lukashenko’s “fading aura of invincibility.”
• The head of the Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy writes on military options in Belarus.

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