Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko found himself deeply dependent on Russian leader Vladimir Putin after massive protests took place in the republic in 2020. The change in the position of the politician was seen by Western experts interviewed The Washington Post.
As the newspaper notes, in 2020, after the elections held in Belarus, the results of which caused a series of mass protests in the country, Lukashenka faced a real threat of losing power. As a result, he decided to turn to the Kremlin for political support. Having received it, analysts believe, he found himself in a position where he was practically forced to comply with the will of the Russian authorities, including in the matter of relations with Ukraine.
“He was cornered. Whatever Putin wants now, Lukashenka says yes, ”said David Marples, a historian who studies processes in Belarus at the University of Alberta in Canada.
According to experts, this explains the change in the rhetoric of the Belarusian leader. So, if in 2014 he tried to take a neutral position regarding the conflict in Ukraine, was in no hurry to recognize Crimea as Russian territory and tried to act as an independent mediator in the negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, now Lukashenka takes a much more pro-Russian position.
At the end of January, Lukashenka accused Western countries of trying to “drown the Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood in blood” and promised to return Ukraine to the “bosom of the Slavs.” Prior to that, he criticized the Kiev authorities for inadequate behavior, noting that the current political leadership of Ukraine is under external control and behaves unpredictably.
In December last year, the President of Belarus spoke about his desire to visit the Crimea. Then he expressed the opinion that de facto and de jure the peninsula belongs to Russia.
In 2020, mass protests erupted in Belarus due to the results of the presidential election. According to the CEC, Lukashenka won 80 percent of the vote, while his rival, the wife of an opposition blogger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, won only ten percent. The authorities began to persecute opposition politicians, as a result of which many of them left the country.
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