Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has just proven the problem with relying on Russian President Vladimir Putin to retain power. Namely, that once you’re on Putin’s leash, it’s very hard to escape it.
Situated along Russia’s western border and north of Ukraine, Belarus also borders three NATO member states: Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Lukashenko has played a cautious game since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He has allowed Russian forces to operate and launch attacks from Belarus, such as during their opening war effort to seize Kyiv, just 50 miles from Belarus’s southern border. But Lukashenko has not enjoined his own forces into the war. He wants to avoid a conflagration that sees NATO enter the fight. He knows that development would lead to his removal from power.
Yet Lukashenko is clearly concerned about the possibility of an escalation of the conflict.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg on Wednesday, Lukashenko pushed back against the idea that North Korea has deployed combat troops to Russia. As he put it, “Knowing his character, Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine.” Pressed on this point, Lukashenko added, “It would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line.”
This is delusional stuff. North Korea has indeed deployed thousands of soldiers to Russia in preparation for combat operations inside Ukraine. But Lukashenko doesn’t want to admit that truth because doing so makes him a party to Putin’s growing international alliance against the West. Lukashenko wants stability, not Putin’s escalation game.
But another interesting moment in the interview came when Rosenberg asked Lukashenko why, if he favors de-escalation, he had allowed Russian forces to invade Ukraine at the war’s start. Lukashenko responded, “There were exercises going on involving several thousand Russian soldiers. … At one point, [Putin] redirected some of these troops to Kyiv. I’m sure they’d been provoked. It’s up to Putin how he withdraws his troops. Via Kyiv. Or he could have gone through Minsk. … These are his troops, and he has the right to move them out whichever way he likes.”
The problem with this argument is that Russia’s war plan to invade Ukraine explicitly included its forces located in southern Belarus. As I outlined with the map below on Jan. 17, 2022, more than a month before the invasion occurred, Lukashenko’s suggestion that Russian forces were provoked into invading Ukraine while they calmly minded their own business in Belarus is thus utterly laughable.
As Rosenberg notes in his report, however, Lukashenko shows his weakness by both denying the reality that Putin deliberately invaded Ukraine via Belarus and by giving Putin carte blanche to do what he wishes. Lukashenko further underlined Putin’s strategic supremacy over him by pledging that he was ready to use Russian tactical nuclear weapons, now deployed in Belarus, in the event that it was deemed necessary. Lukashenko wants none of these things to happen, nor North Koreans in Ukraine. He just has to go along with it.
Things weren’t always this way.
Prior to the August 2020 election, Lukashenko was trying to build closer relations with the West. Criticizing Putin to his face and even inviting then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Minsk, Lukashenko also rejected Putin’s “union project” to subordinate Belarus under a new Russian imperium. But then, Lukashenko lost the August 2020 presidential election and launched a brutal crackdown rather than cede power to pro-Western democrats. He relied upon Russian security services to help put down the widespread protests that followed. Having saved his neighbor, Putin had Lukashenko in his pocket.
Now, Lukashenko is resigned to simply resisting Russian pressure to deploy Belarusian forces directly into the Ukraine meat grinder. Were Putin to believe he could replace Lukashenko with another leader who would deploy Belarusian forces, he would likely do so. Putin’s problem is that such an action might lead to another uprising that saw Belarus align with the West. And that would be a disaster for Putin’s strategic vision.
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Put simply, it’s always a mistake to deal with Putin.
Unless, that is, you can either hold him to his word, or you’re the one with the leash.