Electrifying Situation in Belarus Does Not Subside

To understand the background of what has been said, you probably need to plunge into the latest events on the Belarusian soil.

First of all, let us note that the presidential elections in Belarus are scheduled for August 9. In addition to the current head of state, four more candidates will run for the presidency (a number of candidates were interned or, for various reasons, were not admitted to the elections).

So, on August 4, A. Lukashenka delivered an annual message to the people and the National Assembly of the republic. The importance of this event for him is evidenced by the fact that the Palace of the Republic, designed for more than 2.5 thousand people, was chosen as the meeting place.

The main theses of the President (uncut):

- Belarus is the only calm link in the center of Eurasia, living with its own mind. Therefore, today they are trying to break us! And Russia is afraid of losing us: after all, apart from us, it has no truly close allies left. And the West has recently begun to show more and more substantive interest in us. And China is seriously counting on the stability of its friend;

- Russia has always been, is and will be our closest ally, whoever is in power in Belarus or in Russia! This is an insurmountable factor and it is deep within our peoples! Even in spite of the fact that fraternal relations with us have changed to "partnership". In vain. But we will build strategic partnership relations with the West, and with China, and with America, our neighbors, as well as countries of the distant arc;

- From the oil showdown with Russia, the budget did not receive one and a half billion rubles;

- It is in the information field that all decisive battles for national security are taking place today. The world has entered the era of hybrid wars and “color revolutions”. And if yesterday we still watched such scenarios from the outside, today we are actually involved in such conflicts;

- Billions of resources have been thrown against Belarus. The latest technologies are mobilized;

- Today information has been received about another detachment, which has been transferred to the south. Do not blow up the situation, because it will blaze so hard that it will be difficult to reach Vladivostok (president.gov.by).

Thus, in his message, A. Lukashenka made the main emphasis in the foreign policy vector on the role of Russia, without actually speaking out about the steps of the West, with the exception of fixing its interest in the country. Moreover, the President openly not only accused Moscow of provoking destabilization in Belarus, but actually threatened that if this line continued, the Russian Federation itself would face a destabilizing fire. As a result, on the same day, the Appeal of the Coordination Council of Officers' Meetings of the Air Force and Air Defense Forces of Belarus to the officer corps of the Armed Forces of Belarus was published, which recorded external “attempts to interfere in the internal affairs” of the country “with the aim of destabilizing the situation” and voiced the army’s readiness to ensure “independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of the constitutional order”. At the same time, the document emphasized the confidence of the signatories "in all possible support by the people" of the President and "his victory in the elections" (mil.by).

Surely, there is no particular sense in disclosing the details of what A. Lukashenka said, since not only has the data on the "Wagnerites" detained in Belarus been published for a long time, but information that this list was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to check the participation of all persons in the armed events in Donbas. True, in this context, one can draw attention to the comment of the Russian Ambassador to Belarus Dmitry Mezentsev in connection with the events that took place, when he tried to disavow the interpretation of a number of media outlets that “the fact of detention of Russian citizens on the territory of Belarus as an attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Republic” (belarus.mid .ru).

In the aspect of the matter under consideration, the reaction of the Russian side is quite interesting. Let the head of Russia Vladimir Putin take an observant position, but the Kremlin has already voiced its reaction to the text of A. Lukashenka's message through the lips of responsible persons. Thus, the chairman of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy Alexei Pushkov, with the West's substantive interest in Lukashenka, outlined plans "to tear Belarus away from Russia and achieve a regime change." But “no one has yet succeeded in such a game” (twitter.com/Alexey_Pushkov). In turn, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova, calling what was happening a performance, stressed that the detained Russian citizens “will not be let alone, offended, and Minsk knows this very well” (tass.ru). Well, the infamous first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots, Konstantin Zatulin, who is notorious in Azerbaijan, described A. Lukashenka as a "freeloader and blackmailer" who "cannot be regarded as a friend of Russia" (gazeta.ru).

It is quite obvious that this development is not an accidental event on the eve of the elections. For example, some experts are convinced that by doing this A. Lukashenka is trying to win the sympathy of the Western establishment, which seems to have shown warmth towards him, but disappointed by the measures taken against possible electoral competitors (some of them are interned and others are not allowed to participate in the elections). In a “collective” format, the perception of the situation is presented in the version presented by the Russian Vedomosti: “The authorities have switched to repressions” and, probably, A. Lukashenka “is preparing for the violent dispersal of possible protests” after he is declared the winner in the elections ... Russia "has always been indifferent to such actions," but "the United States and the EU, for the restoration of relations with which so much effort has been spent over the past decade, will certainly condemn such behavior." Therefore, destabilizing forces “had to be looked for among Russian PMC fighters, who had previously used transit through Minsk under the conditions of coronavirus - obviously, with the knowledge of the Belarusian special services”. Thus, the capture by the relevant structures of "the so-called Wagnerites, about whose actions hundreds of articles have been written by the Western media, will become an indulgence in the eyes of their Western neighbors in the event of a very likely violent dispersal of the protests" (vedomosti.ru).

On the other hand, analysts draw attention to the fact that relations between Russia and Belarus have worsened far from the last week. In particular, it is noted that at the beginning of 2020, the Russian Federation stopped oil supplies to Belarusian refineries due to the lack of agreement on the price and premiums to suppliers. True, in March, Moscow and Minsk fixed a mutual understanding in terms of implementing the balance of previously agreed oil supplies, and Belarus managed to get the go-ahead to maintain gas prices at last year's level. But then the "trading" began again.

In light of this development of events, a number of experts recall what A. Lukashenka said at the beginning of June: “Those who are financed today by the Russian oligarchs have clearly understood that with the money of the Russian oligarchs they are leading this frozen, so-called radical opposition of Belarus to power” (president.gov.by). Following this, the Secretary of State of the Security Council of Belarus Andrei Ravkov said that in the framework of countering attempts to raise from the outside "a protest structure using certain technologies, which we call somewhere color revolutions, somewhere new technologies," the country's military doctrine stipulates the right of the armed forces (in accordance with the laws of the state) “to take part in the restoration of constitutional order on the territory of the Republic of Belarus” (ctv.by).

In terms of the above, it becomes quite obvious that there is nothing surprising in the current situation in Belarus. There has been no such activity of the masses in the country for a long time, many of whom openly express support for the anti-Lukashenka forces. The excitement around "33 heroes" (but not the heroes from Pushkin's fairy tale), of course, should have somehow raised the President's rating. However, it is not possible to confidently consider the factor of detecting “Russian destabilizers” as a message to the West about the possibility of an anti-Russian tilt in Belarus. In particular, against the background of A. Lukashenka's statement in his message of August 4, the special tone of the Russian-Belarusian relations, while simultaneously stating the rejection of the Belarusian reality by the outside world (socio-economic paradigm). Undoubtedly, there is enough anti-Russian rhetoric (and today actions) in A. Lukashenka's statements. But with a more attentive listening to what he said in this direction, "underwater" nuances are also highlighted, caused, perhaps, by plans to win over a part of the opposition electorate to their side.

How successful will these steps be taken by the President of the country? There is very little left to wait for the answer to this question. Perhaps one of the indicators of the reality of a serious "clash" between Russia and Belarus (albeit not directly in the physical sense) will be the participation or non-participation of observers from the Russian Federation in the August 9 elections. Although, of course, sometimes a couple of jokers remain in the arsenal of the players, who can appear at a stage when everything seems to be clear to everyone.

Teymur Atayev