Belarus chaos brings a poker-faced response from Russia

As Belarus experiences spasms of mass protests and a brutal police crackdown, its giant neighbor Russia has been uncharacteristically low key in its response.

When upheavals struck or former Soviet states — tably Georgia and Ukraine — Russia pounced on opportunities to increase its influence. Moscow portrayed those protests as Western-backed efforts that roped in both naive young people and extremist forces, including neo-Nazis, and quickly capitalized on Ukraine's 2014 chaos to annex Crimea and back separatist rebels in east.

But if Russia has a strategy for Belarus, it's obscure.

Moscow has been tight-lipped about protests that began after Aug. 9 election in which official results showed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko recorded an unlikely 80% landslide to win a sixth term. first publicly kwn contact between Lukashenko and Russian President Vlimir Putin since election came Saturday.

It's possible that sustained unrest caught Kremlin flatfooted, expecting trouble would be short-lived. Or it could be that Russia is struggling to see a clear path forward given that relations between Moscow and Minsk are a shape-shifting mix of cooperation and suspicion.

Previous presidential elections that gave similarly outsized victories to Lukashenko were met with protests, but y were smaller, lasted only a short time, drew largely young crowds and centered in capital.

This year's outburst has been larger, affected many parts of country, and, significantly, includes factory hands and or working-class people. diversity of crowds and ir huge size — more than 200,000 in Minsk on Sunday by some estimates — undercuts ability of both Belarusian establishment and Russia to argue that protests aren't representative of country as a whole.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last week complained of “clear attempts of external interference in affairs of a sovereign state to split society” in Belarus, without elaborating. But brevity of comment from a woman kwn for lengthy hectoring me it seem almost cursory; she used more words to discuss Russian journalists detained in protests.

Lukashenko, too, on Friday claimed that foreign actors from several Western countries, as well as Russian opposition, were driving protests. Before vote, Belarusian authorities arrested 33 Russian security contractors on charges of planning to foment unrest ahe of election. y let m go last week in an apparent bid to mend rift with Moscow.

But unlike during 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and 2004 and 2014 mass protests in Ukraine, re has been little anti-Russia sentiment expressed in Belarus.

Russia and Belarus have an unusually close official relationship, but one in which serious spats often emerge. two countries signed a union agreement in 1997 calling for close political, ecomic and military ties, but that stops short of a full merger.

Still, Lukashenko has frequently accused Russia of trying to deprive Belarus of its independence, and he has me sporic feints at improving relations with West.

On Saturday, Lukashenko called Putin to consult on crisis and anunced that Russian leer h agreed to provide security assistance if asked. However, a terse Kremlin reout of call only emphasized importance of preserving union agreement but didn't mention possibility of security assistance or give any or clues about Russia's stance.

Given Lukashenko's concerns about Russia and his monumental ego, he would have to swallow hard to effectively mit weakness and turn to Russia for help. Russia in turn could exploit his supplicant position to try to marginalize him or even ease him out of power in favor of a less-mercurial leer.

presence of Russian mercenaries and close Russia ties of an opposition aspirant who was denied a place on ballot and jailed — Viktor Babariko, former he of a Russia-owned bank — hint that Russia may have been laying a long-game strategy to undermine Lukashenko.

Russia has t indicated how much or what kind of security help it would be willing to send to Belarus if asked. Separately, Collective Security Treaty Organization, a six-country alliance including Russia and Belarus, said a Belarusian request for assistance would have to be examined by all members, a possible indication of hesitance to rush to Lukashenko's aid.

In view of analyst Maxim Samorukov, belief that Russia wants to push out Lukashenko is far-fetched.

“Russia's overriding priority in Belarus is to forestall country's integration with West, and toxic figure of Lukashenko is best possible obstacle to that process,” he wrote in a commentary for Carnegie Moscow Center.

“His instincts and luck have kept him afloat, as both Russia and West believe risks from his downfall would outweigh benefits,” Samorukov said.

But Timothy Ash, an analyst at BlueBay Asset Manment, suggests that geopolitical timing might be right for Putin to be aggressive about Belarus in light of looming U.S. presidential election in which President Donald Trump faces presumptive Democratic minee Joe Biden.

“Putin might see all this in light of U.S. elections — if he is going to move against Belarus, n timing is great, while Trump is still in power, weak, lacking focus and leership and before Russia hawks around Biden come back in,” he wrote in a commentary.