The Belarusian origins of the war in Ukraine

Photo: Pavel Bednyakov Agence France-Presse In this pool photo released by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg on January 28, 2024.

Patrice Senécal In Warsaw

Published at 0:00

• Europe

First there were those scenes of jubilation in August 2020 where the streets of Minsk, taken over by dozens thousands of Belarusians, were singing the revolution, telling the dictator to “get lost.” Then, in February 2022, these Iskander missiles pounding invaded Ukraine, fired from the same Belarus that had become an accomplice of Moscow. Between these two events, which occurred 18 months apart, the reversal is striking. It tells the dramatic story of an autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, who, ready to do anything to retain power, sacrificed his country’s sovereignty on the altar of his political survival after the revolt of the summer of 2020.

The large-scale aggression launched by Russia in Ukraine partly finds its origins in the turn of this repressed mobilization. The despot Lukashenko, isolated and riddled with sanctions since, has transformed himself into a vassal of the Kremlin.

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If Vladimir Putin was able to launch his tanks to attack Kiev, located about a hundred kilometers south of the Belarusian border, on February 24, 2022, it is thanks to Lukashenko, who transformed his country into a military rear base, the starting point for the Russian offensive. Without directly involving the Belarusian army, this co-belligerence of the regime made possible the atrocities of Buchá and the occupation of the Kievan periphery in the spring of 2022.

Equilibriste

Since the beginning of his presidency, Alexander Lukashenko has become a master at navigating between Russia and the West. “Russia has always been the economic backer and political protector of this regime. However, Lukashenko, in power for three decades, has sometimes used other vectors of Belarusian foreign policy to encourage Moscow to be more generous,” says Artyom Shraibman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia think tank. “On two occasions, he initiated some domestic liberalization in order to warm relations with Europe, only to be brought to an end by a new cycle of repression.” “As in 2015, when Minsk acted as a mediator in the Donbass conflict, hosting talks between Russia and Ukraine.

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The regime's objective ? To try to counterbalance Russian dependence, as relations with Moscow have not always been at their best, particularly on the pricing of Russian gas.

But the defeated revolution of the summer of 2020 and the increased international isolation that followed sounded the death knell for this balancing act. In September of that year, Putin granted a $1.5 billion loan to keep his neighbor’s battered economy afloat. “After 2020, ties with the West were severed, making Belarus a loyal military ally of Moscow,” Shraibman explains.

Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova Agence France-Presse A man walks past a billboard depicting a soldier and reading in Belarusian, “This is our land! And I will protect it!” » in Minsk, February 14, 2023.

In May 2021, the Belarusian regime took a new step. It forced the hijacking of a plane in order to arrest an opponent on board, on the tarmac of Minsk airport. The European Union immediately responded by closing its airspace to Belarusian planes and banning imports of fertilizers, particularly potash, a major economic lever for the regime. In retaliation, the dictatorship orchestrated a migration crisis on the doorstep of Poland and Lithuania, dangling an easy passage to the West before citizens from Africa and the Middle East. In the sky as on land, Belarus locked itself down: Poland and Lithuania erected walls on their eastern border.

Enslavement

In the months that followed, tensions rose, as did Lukashenko’s subjugation. In November 2021, Moscow and Minsk sealed a joint military doctrine for “the defense of [their] border.” Lukashenko then recognized Crimea as part of Russia, a first. He also authorized, in a parody of a referendum, the deployment of nuclear warheads in Belarus, a neighbor of NATO countries.

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• This text is published via our Perspectives section.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is looming. In the winter of 2022, nearly 30,000 soldiers from Putin’s army are deployed on Belarusian soil, officially for “military exercises.” “It seems like this was a long-planned strategy,” says Veronica Laputska, co-founder of the EAST Center think tank. “Without Belarus in the equation, Russia would not have been able to use the shortest possible route to kyiv,” says political scientist Artyom Shraibman.

Two and a half years later, one thing is clear among the Belarusian dissidents, who are massively opposed to Russian aggression: the fate of their country depends on that of Ukraine. Not only does she see her dream of democracy fading away, but she also helplessly observes the militarization of her homeland, at the mercy of the Kremlin's imperialist aspirations.