Kyiv, Ukraine – Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it sound as if Western nations have been to thank for making his decades-old dream to merge Russia with neighbouring Belarus come true.
“Unprecedented political and sanctions pressure from the so-called collective West pushes us to speed up the merging processes,” Vladimir Putin mentioned on July 1 at a discussion board within the western Belarusian metropolis of Grodno, a stone’s throw away from the European Union’s border.
“Because together, it will be easier to minimise the damage from the illegal sanctions” imposed on Russia and Belarus by the West, Putin mentioned.
Per week earlier, his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko urged leaders of different ex-Soviet nations to get nearer to the “union state” of Russia and Belarus – or face the lack of their independence.
“Today, the nations of post-Soviet space must be sincerely interested in their rapprochement with the union state – if, of course, they want to keep their sovereignty and independence,” he mentioned in a video handle.
“Those who hesitate have to understand – without the promptest unification and rapprochement, stronger inter-state ties and just simple human relations, tomorrow we might not be any more,” mentioned Lukashenko, who has dominated Belarus since 1994 and whose re-elections have more and more been marred by violence towards his rivals and protesters.
In the late Nineteen Nineties, Lukashenko was desperate to merge his ex-Soviet nation of 9.2 million with Russia – and signed a deal to create a “union state” with a typical structure and parliament.
The former collective farm supervisor, nicknamed “Bat’ka” (Daddy), hoped to succeed the heavy-drinking Russian President Boris Yeltsin whose psychological and bodily state was quickly deteriorating.
Yeltsin, nevertheless, anointed Putin, a teetotal intelligence chief, as his successor in 1999, and Lukashenko hit the brakes on the merger.
But he saved milking the Kremlin, getting multibillion-rouble loans, discounted pure gasoline, commerce preferences and perks for Belarusian labour migrants.
Russia’s backing helped Lukashenko, who has lengthy been dubbed “Europe’s last dictator”, to maintain his head above water politically and economically, particularly when the West sanctioned Minsk for its intensified crackdown on opposition and critics.
Lukashenko additionally saved searching for leeway.
He sought to wean his financial system off the earnings from state-run collective farms, chemical vegetation and an enormous oil refinery that used low-cost Russian crude.
Defying his picture of a former Communist official with a Chevron moustache and a robust rural accent, he created the Belarus Hi-Tech Park, a Belarusian “Silicon Valley” the place tens of hundreds of IT engineers developed spectacular software program and startups.
But the IT sector shrank after the boiling level in 2020, when a whole lot of hundreds of Belarusians took to the streets to protest towards his sixth re-election.
They clashed with police and held strikes – however Lukashenko’s legislation enforcement businesses responded with violence, torture, arrests and jail sentences.
Tens of hundreds left Belarus, together with many IT specialists, largely for neighbouring Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.
Lukashenko appeared cornered, and Moscow remained his solely backer – whereas the Kremlin saved pushing him to finalise the merger.
Russian officers remembered too effectively how Putin’s approval rankings rose to a stratospheric 88 p.c after Moscow’s earlier “acquisition” – the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The USSR revived?
To some observers, the merger is a completed deal; they view it as a part of Moscow’s plans to announce the revival of the truncated duplicate of the Soviet Union this December.
“The matter has been solved in the light of the USSR’s centennial anniversary in December 2022 and Putin’s plans to create a ‘third empire’ that would [succeed czarist Russia and the USSR and] include Belarus,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch mentioned.
“What’s happening now is simply a technological step to get the public opinion ready for this act,” he informed Al Jazeera.
But different analysts say Lukashenko continues to be attempting to push again.
“Lukashenko is badly cornered, but seems to be resisting the final solution,” Pavel Luzin, a Russia-based analyst with the Jamestown Foundation, a think-tank in Washington, DC, informed Al Jazeera.
While Putin’s statements concerning the merger are an opportunity to spice up his approval rankings in Russia, Lukashenko’s phrases concerning the union state are nothing however an “alarm signal” to the West, a Belarusian-born observer mentioned.
“Lukashenko’s words are more of an alarm signal for [other] nations, mostly in the EU – you are pushing us closer to Russia,” Igar Tyshkevich, who is predicated in Kyiv, informed Al Jazeera.
And in relation to the Belarusian public, unification is much from in style.
In July 2021, the variety of Belarusians who staunchly backed it rose to 9 p.c from 5 in 2020, in keeping with the newest unbiased survey on the matter performed by the Chatham House, a British think-tank.
Eleven p.c of these polled wished Belarus and Russia to have a “single market with single foreign policy and army,” and a few third stood for a “single market” and a “free trade zone,” in keeping with the ballot.
“With moods like these, it’s hard to conduct a merger,” Tyshkevich mentioned.
Even if state-backed Belarusian media retailers have been to assist the concept, this is able to hardly change the general public’s temper as solely 1 / 4 of Belarusians depend on these channels, he mentioned.
“No matter how harsh your propaganda is, if 75 percent of the population doesn’t watch it, you have no mechanisms to influence these people’s opinion, even if your propaganda is genius,” Tyshkevich mentioned.
