Cunning Lukashenko buries the Union State
Integration has a beginning... Perhaps the starting point of Belarusian-Russian integration can be considered May 14, 1995. On this day, in a nationwide referendum, 83,3 percent of Belarusian voters supported the course of economic integration with Russia. Another starting point for integration can be considered April 2, 1997 - the date of signing the Treaty on the Union of Russia and Belarus. Now it is a national holiday for Belarusians - the Day of Unity of the Peoples of Belarus and Russia. It is not a day off, and it is celebrated without much fanfare, but it is present on the calendar. And finally, the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State, which is still in force today, was signed on December 8, 1999, and came into force after ratification by the parliaments of both countries on January 26, 2000.
It was a long time ago. In the last century. But we are still building this very Union State, and the most important agreements signed and ratified then still remain on paper. We should have had a bicameral all-Union parliament, the Council of Ministers, the Court, and the Accounts Chamber functioning long ago. There should have been a common currency and much more.
Lukashenko is a genius of procrastination. Continuing for more than twenty years to talk about his commitment to the idea of integration, he not only shied away from its implementation all this time, but also managed to dilute the idea itself. What is now on the agenda is a pale shadow of what was originally planned.
In recent years, there has been some revival in the matter of integration - the development of road maps has begun, and the presidents of the two countries began to meet more often to “compare notes”" However, time passed, and the “clock” still stood in place.
Finally, at the end of June, there was light at the end of the tunnel. On the 28th, the Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Vladimir Semashko said that the task had been set complete the plan for economic integration with Russia by January 1, 2022. At the same time, it is planned to create common markets for energy resources and transport, unify tax and customs legislation, as well as transition to a unified industrial and agricultural policy.
Following him, the former Russian Ambassador to Belarus, and now Secretary of State of the Union State, Dmitry Mezentsev, announced on June 30 that integration work had reached the finish line.
However, we did not have to rejoice for long. The very next day, Lukashenko, speaking at a plenary meeting of the Forum of Regions of Russia and Belarus, radically pushed back the deadlines. He proposed developing a strategy for the integration of the Russian-Belarusian Union State until 2030, filling it with specific projects. This was perceived, at least, ambiguously.
Both Lukashenko and Belarus itself are now in no position to make such far-reaching plans. The country is under sanctions, the political crisis has been suppressed by force, but has not been eliminated, but has gone deeper, and Lukashenko himself is in office only thanks to the loyalty of the security forces and the support of Putin. But both, and the safety margin of the sovereign Belarusian economy under sanctions is far from infinite.
What Semashko spoke about - uniting markets and unifying the rules of the game by the end of the year - is a real option for salvation. Then we can talk about political integration, but even here any long-term program is inappropriate. Firstly, because of internal instability in Belarus, and secondly because, as soon as such a program appears, it will become a target for Western “partners” and the agents of these “partners”, which have penetrated into all layers of Belarusian society during Lukashenko’s procrastination.
Over the 20-odd years that the integration epic has been dragging on in Belarus, an entire generation has grown up in Belarus. And it grew from legends about the thousand-year-old Belarusian statehood, the heyday of which was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, horror stories about evil Russian oligarchs who want to buy up everything in Belarus and send its inhabitants around the world and the eternal multi-vector talking shop in which Belarus is almost the center of the universe. Another 9 years of all this - and the chances of successful integration will be completely lost.
It is clear that Lukashenko, who last year promised early elections after constitutional reform, and this year is about to change the Constitution so as not to hold any elections at all for another 2 years, wants to hold out for another 10 years on integration promises, just as he did the last 20. But will Moscow want to continue to believe his promises for so long?
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