Vedomosti: Everybody needs independent Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

Now everybody needs independent Belarus. And 25 March both the Belarusian authorities and the opposition will celebrate with equal passion their independence, the”Vedomosti» Russian newspaper reports today.

If Alyaksandr Lukashenka behaves consistently, a conventional watershed separating Russia and Belarus will become the borderline of Europe and the NATO.

Not so clever but intuitively resourceful leader does not simply want to survive until the end of its term but to provide his security after the presidency. Batka’s pragmatic rural thinking is now busy with pondering upon which of the two is more beneficial today to deal with- Russia or the European Union, East or West. At this moment he has chosen the West. The only thing to do now is to convince the former “villains” that his intensions are serious.

So what? Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan have managed the same. The new father of all the Turmenians will also be studying carefully and suspiciously the surrounding world and we can’t exclude that he will choose putting up a democratically bold dictatorship front to deserve cautious favors of the power centers located far off Moscow.

The Spasskaya tower with its gates as squeaky and creaky as the economic policy of the Kremlin is not the only pupil of the eye. Moscow has missed its chance to dethrone Lukashenka, to agree with him, to grow up his successor, even during the latest crises it didn’t manage to hit the final blow and preferred the unconvincing alliance rhetoric to the final result. So the playground is free and it may be occupied by the West. And as far as the Belarusian people who, according to their leader, live ”well but not long”, have deserved a normal life and reforms not less but, maybe, more than anyone else.

Now it is Alyaksandr Milinkevich, one of the oppositional leaders, who proposes a change: you release the political prisoners and we pave your way to the European institutions. And pragmatic Belarusian economy operators are ready to provide their gas pipelines to Ukraine for gas pumping in both directions. Ukraine needs Belarus and Belarus needs Ukraine. Without Russia.
The situation has qualitatively changed. Belarus remains motionless at the historical balance, which may swing in any direction. That is not clear only to the European officials and to the Russian political and economic elite.

There are no allies. There are only partners-situational, temporal, and permanent. That is clear to those who are going to make the alliance with Lukashenka. It is also clear to the former collective farm director himself. And he also feels that he has got a chance to secure his life after death, i.e., after his presidency is over.

The collapse of the USSR has not finished yet. We are facing its completion now. Belarus was considered by the Russian elite as a part of the Soviet Union and, thus, its colony in compliance with the assigned right. Lukashenka was ready to adopt such statement on certain conditions. That was the secrete of his political longevity and the key to understanding of his charisma and his popularity with both peoples – Russian and Belarusian. As soon as the Russian oil and gas policy became the “ market’ one, quite of a sudden, the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Only in Moscow they thought that Lukashenka would pass away and Belarus would remain as a sort of a great extension to the Smolensk region. But it so happened that Belarus had separated with its Batka, its political prisoners, its opposition. And 25 March both the Belarusian authorities and the opposition will celebrate with equal passion their independence.

Each party needs a different Belarus but they both need Belarus independent.