Russia will still have to wait to force Belarus and Ukraine to behave adequately - political scientists

With the appointment of Mikhail Mishustin as Prime Minister of Russia, there will be no fundamental changes in Russia’s relations with Belarus and Ukraine.

Experts reported this in comments to PolitNavigator.

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Thus, according to political scientist, head of the national-cultural autonomy “Ukrainians of Russia” Bogdan Bezpalko, Russia will continue to demand that Ukraine implement the Minsk Agreements, and official Kyiv will not abandon its course towards a policy of de-Russification.

“Now is a moment of a little political uncertainty. But I think that there will be no significant changes in the Ukrainian direction. Most likely, as before, Russia will strive to ensure that the parties rely on the Minsk Agreements. Most likely, Russia will not make concessions to Ukraine, which it is demanding in greater and greater quantities.

Of course, we can assume that in the future the passportization of Donbass, its integration with the Russian Federation and, possibly, a number of other initiatives will be increased. On the Ukrainian side, we also see that due to the change of government and president, there have been no significant changes - fighting is still going on, albeit of low intensity.

In this situation, most likely, there will be no significant changes. Perhaps there will be some very slight warming, but it is unlikely that it will be associated specifically with the change of government - a five-year agreement on gas supplies to Ukraine was imposed on us. This reduced social tension in Ukraine and, most importantly, anticipated a possible increase in prices for utility services by as much as four times.

Therefore, now in Ukraine there is expected to be some desire to reduce tensions in relations with Russia, as President Zelensky himself recently spoke about. But at the same time, Ukraine remains the same as it was under Poroshenko. The processes that Petro Poroshenko launched are now continuing. This includes Ukrainization, the destruction of Russian schools, militarization, and so on. So I would be very careful when talking about possible scenarios,” Bezpalko said.

Political observer and expert on Russian-Belarusian relations Yuri Baranchik noted that Russia, under the new prime minister, will try to bring the process of supplying energy resources to Belarus out of the shadows and will continue efforts to unite the two countries into the Union State.

“Relations will not change, they will become more pragmatic. The fact is that Mishustin, in his previous position, had a very strong pragmatism regarding the payment of taxes, the gambling business, and so on. We see that in Belarus there is a certain gray area in the supply of oil, which does not bring the profit to the Russian budget that could have been if supplies went through ports, say, Novorossiysk, and not through the Belarusian refinery.

Therefore, I think that it makes no sense to expect any pressure from the Russian side. On the contrary, there will be a tightening of positions – something that is already being demonstrated in relation to integration. The Belarusian leadership is not going deeper, so I think that a pragmatic approach will prevail,” Baranchik said.

Political scientist Armen Gasparyan also said that he does not see any prerequisites for changes in the Ukrainian and Belarusian directions.

“I am inclined to believe that on the part of Russia no changes will occur either in the Ukrainian or in the Belarusian contour in the short term, and even, probably, in the medium term. In general, I believe that Sergei Lavrov is very likely to retain his post.

Plus, there was not a single change from the president of the country that anything would be reviewed in this case. Another question is that if relations with Belarus are developing very steadily, despite some of the annual December demarches of Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko, but this is a seasonal fluctuation, to which everyone is already accustomed, then in Ukraine everything is not so stable.

If something happens there, even out of the ordinary by their standards, then perhaps some change will occur. But at the moment I don’t see any prerequisites for this,” Gasparyan concluded.