Russia’s foreign policy
While Russia and Belarus made final preparations to kick off their quadrennial joint strategic-operational exercise Zapad 2021, the two countries’ air-defense and air force units were put on joint duty as part of the recently established training and combat center in Grodno Oblast, in western Belarus.
After the West extended additional sanctions against Belarus and following Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s big press conference on August 9, the Kremlin began signaling its readiness to implement the so-called Armenian model to resolve the political crisis in the country.
The pressure on the regime from the three sides will only intensify.
The Belarusian authorities’ forced landing of the Vilnius-bound Ryanair Flight 4978 at Minsk airport, on May 23, and the arrest of the opposition NEXTA Telegram channel founder Roman Protasevich, who was traveling aboard the plane, raised the political crisis happening inside Belarus since last August to the top of the global agenda (see EDM, May 24, 25). Much uncertainty remains about which actors were actually behind this special operation not to mention their real motives and ultimate goals.
In a ritual that is becoming as frequent as it is increasingly empty, Alyaksandr Lukashenka is heading to Russia yet again to meet with Vladimir Putin.
The air forces of Russia and Belarus will begin joint air-defense missions out of one of the Belarusian airfields this summer.
As Belarus braced for a fresh round of protests this week and as opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for tough new sanctions against Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime in a Congressional testimony, the Kremlin has been busy laying the groundwork to tighten its grip on Russia’s far smaller but strategically important western neighbor.
On 7 November 2020, the president of Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko, visited the Astravyets Nuclear Power Plant (Astravyets NPP) and dubbed its pending commissioning a “historic moment” for Belarus.
They went skiing. They rode snowmobiles. And they lauded their “strategic partnership and alliance,” pledging to deepen integration between their two countries.
The 2020 political crisis in Belarus erupted against the backdrop of major
confrontation in the Belarus–Russia relations. The article looks into the role of
Russia and domestic Belarusian factors in creating prerequisites for this political
crisis.
Yuri Tsarik on the Belarusian leadership’s faults and the role of Russia in the country’s election.
After Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka rejected the Kremlin’s so-called integration ultimatum at the end of 2019, and following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announced constitutional changes, the following January, to effectively reset his presidential term tally to zero, some experts argued that a forced unification scenario between Belarus and Russia within the Union State had become significantly less likely.
In the mid-1990s, Minsk signed several treaties and agreements with Moscow that prioritized a pro-Russian geopolitical orientation...
Talks in Sochi last December confirmed that Belarusian-Russian relations have reached an impasse
The Belarus–Russia talks on “deepening the integration” have been controversial and have resonated both internationally and domestically.
Yuri Tsarik reflects on the negotiations held in Sochi on December 6-7
Analysis by Yuri Tsarik and László Vasa
Following predictions by Russian military intelligence (GRU) that the West wants to separate Belarus from Russia and incorporate it into the Western orbit...
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict of 2014 and the subsequent militarypolitical confrontation between Russia and the West marked the transition of Russia to a new strategic doctrine...
Belarus adopted a new Information Security Concept (ISC) on March 18, 2019, based on a resolution from the Belarus Security Council (President.gov.by, March 18)
Belarus’s ongoing drive to cautiously normalize relations with the West has raised concerns from Russian military intelligence...
The Kremlin’s concerns about maintaining Belarus within its geopolitical sphere of influence have been mounting as of late
Four sacks of potatoes and a piece of lard were the Christmas gifts president Lukashenko brought for his meeting with Putin on December 29.
Four key scenarios for the further development of bilateral relations
Belarus and Russia have held a string of recent high level bilateral talks. What have they achieved for relations between the two allies at a time of lingering apprehension?
Russian actions toward Belarus since 2015 show that Moscow is no longer pursuing the “union deal” it had established with Minsk earlier and instead has placed its bets on the forced integration of its western neighbor into a Russian-dominated state, according to Arseny Sivitsky
If you are going to travel to Poland and the Baltic States in your car in the first half of June, prepare to let pass the huge military columns of NATO technology. The “Saber Strike” exercise begins there — regular, but largest in its history in terms of the number of participants. In the military sense, maneuvers do not pose a threat to Belarus, but in the political sense, Moscow will certainly take advantage of them.
In 2015, the Baltic states declared their intent to withdraw from the BRELL agreement and desynchronize their power grids from the IPS/UPS synchronous area to which they still belong as part of the legacy of Soviet occupation.
On 27 October 2017, Russia’s Attorney General, Yuri Chaika, met his Belarusian counterpart, Vladimir Konyuk, to discuss joint measures to tackle drug trafficking in the two countries
In the run-up to the presidential election in Kyrgyzstan that took place on 15 October 2017, relations turned sour with the country’s northern neighbour, Kazakhstan.
Pages
