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Scared By Ukraine War, Belarus Strongman Lukashenko Mulls Ditching Russia
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Feb 01, 2015 10:28pm |
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| Category | General |
| Author | Christopher Harress |
| News Date | Sunday, February 1, 2015 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | As the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government closes in on its first anniversary, fighting in the east of the country intensified this month as the rebels advanced in the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. About 745 miles away in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, a longtime Russian ally, scared by the war, may be making plans to distance himself from President Vladimir Putin’s Russia -- depriving Moscow of its closest friend among Slavic nations.
After the annexation of Crimea in March and the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine in April, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a strongman who has been called the last dictator in Europe, minced no words. “No matter who comes to the Belarusian land, I will fight. Even if it is Putin,” he told the Russian independent television channel Dozhd.
Those comments marked newly strained relations with Moscow. Along a similar line, Belarus refused to join countersanctions by Russia against the West last year. In response, Russia banned all meat product imports from Belarus, as GlobalMeatNews reported.
Lukashenko may be seeing in what’s happening to Ukraine a harbinger of what may come to Belarus should it ever anger its powerful neighbor. “Russia for the first time is openly at war ... with an East Slavic, white Christian, post-Soviet country, which in many respects is just like Belarus,” said Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. relations with states of the former Soviet Union at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington. |
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