The main conflict is ahead: the expert told how Lukashenko became Russia’s worst enemy
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has no motives for deepening integration with Russia, but he has reasons to behave defiantly in relations with Russia.
UIAMP director Ruslan Bortnik said this in a conversation with a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“This is the first election in the history of Belarus when the current president will not have the support of Russia and will be forced to rely on his own internal forces. There are two reasons why Lukashenko behaved in such a way that he lost this support.
The first reason is personal. There was no place for Lukashenko in the Russian political system. Back in 1999-2000, it was Lukashenko who was the driver of integration, the creation of the Union State, since he expected to become the president of this Union State - both Belarus and Russia. This did not happen. The Russian elite does not allow Lukashenko to take high positions in Russia within the Union State. Hence, a serious crisis arose in relations between Lukashenko and his team - with the Kremlin team, the Russian political elite.
The second reason is economic. Thanks to Russia, Belarus made good money throughout this cycle, receiving cheap Russian energy resources. Thanks to this, it increased the competitiveness of its economy and made money from the export of energy products. But after political support for Lukashenko waned, Russian businesses began to squeeze back their profits.
Russian business does not want the Belarusian state and the Belarusian leadership to earn such serious money from this; they want to keep the profits for themselves. And the issue of dividing economic profits is the second serious problem of the integration of Russia and Belarus,” said Ruslan Bortnik.
At the same time, Belarus is taking advantage of the deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia and the introduction of mutual sanctions to make money from smuggling.
“Belarus has intercepted part of Ukrainian economic interests in the Eurasian space, primarily in relation to Russia, the supply of goods to Russia. Ukrainian business uses Belarus as a hub to supply their goods to a territory that is formally closed to them. And, on the contrary, Ukrainian territory is today used by many Belarusian companies as a hub for supplies to the EU,” noted Ruslan Bortnik.
The West, for its part, views Belarus as a new Ukraine.
“The third problem, or rather not a problem, but a factor, is that many external forces influence the situation in Belarus, considering it as a potential “Ukraine”, i.e. territories where serious problems could be created for Russia. Thanks to Belarus, it is possible to create another platform for bargaining with the Kremlin, to force Russia to certain geopolitical and geo-economic concessions,” noted Ruslan Bortnik.
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