Vladimir Putin didn’t need to launch an invasion to put a stranglehold on Belarus.
From using the country as a launchpad for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine to stashing Russian nuclear weapons on its soil to deepening trade ties, Putin has made Belarus less part of Moscow’s orbit and more a full-fledged state in his reconstituted fantasy Soviet empire.
And the Russian ruler has no plans to relinquish his grip.
Cue Belarus’ next rigged presidential election, scheduled for the end of January. Nearly five years ago, as massive anti-regime protests rocked Minsk amid accusations of election rigging by longtime authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s public backing proved instrumental to keeping the Belarusian ruler in power.
Lukashenko responded to the protests by carrying out a massive crackdown to crush dissent and opposition, sparking an exodus of dissidents from Belarus to countries around the world.
But forget Lukashenko for a moment: Activists worry Belarus might not get a chance at democracy again until Putin is no longer in charge in Moscow.
“[Putin] knows how to manipulate Lukashenko,” said Art Balenok, a Minsk-born activist now living in Austria. “Essentially, Lukashenko is a tool. He’s no longer independent.”
Opposition leader urges caution
Lukashenko has said that this month’s election will not involve abuse or political pressure. In reality, however, the man long regarded as Europe’s last dictator has stifled all viable political dissent, and now looks set to cruise to a seventh consecutive term in office.
Some members of the Belarusian opposition are telling supporters to boycott the election in protest.
Meanwhile, the optimism from 2020 — when Lukashenko appeared genuinely threatened and millions likely voted for now-exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya — is nowhere to be found.
Lukashenko looks inevitable. And challenging him is inadvisable.
“In Belarus, once you start getting into political issues, it’s very easy to lose everything,” said Aleś Alachnovič, economic adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, who now lives in Washington, D.C.
Back in 2020, police pulled drivers from cars, stormed buildings where protesters shouted anti-regime slogans, and assaulted people in shopping malls. Many bystanders were arrested arbitrarily and beaten mercilessly, while protests drew stun grenades and water cannons.
This election “is not [the] time for Belarusian people to go to the streets, to uprise visibly, because you know repressions are too high,” Tsikhanouskaya said at POLITICO’s P28 event in Brussels in December. “Every time in Belarus people are detained, you just don’t see it.”
The state released more than 200 political prisoners in 2024, according to the Minsk-based Viasna Human Rights Centre, but around 1,250 are still jailed. Critics say the releases were designed to sway voters and allay Western sanctions.
How Putin did it
Lukashenko’s fraudulent election victory in 2020 — advocates and election monitors say Tsikhanouskaya likely received 56 percent of the votes cast — pushed Belarusians to the streets in droves, protesting in cities like Minsk, Brest and Grodno.
“Many of us thought, if Russia would stay neutral, then we’d have a chance,” Alachnovič said.
But an embattled Lukashenko turned to Putin for a lifeline.
The Kremlin sent over journalists and spin doctors to shore up messaging for the government as well as organizers to stage pro-regime marches, according to the Wilson Center. Moscow also openly discussed providing military assistance, backing Lukashenko’s claim of victory with the threat of force. Belarusian riot police would detain nearly 7,000 protestors and bystanders in just over four days.
“In the end, they were instrumental in enabling Lukashenko and keeping him in power,” said Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. Graham now works at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Russia and Belarus have long been tied. A December 1999 treaty established a union between the two countries that linked their economies and military sectors, among other fields. But Lukashenko routinely looked toward the West to stave off overt Russian influence, frustrating Putin.
Putin has since exploited that changed relationship, conducting what some experts have called a “creeping annexation” of Belarus, highlighted by increased military cooperation between the two governments and a closer monetary policy.
Russian troops used Belarus as a staging ground during their February 2022 assault on Kyiv. Meanwhile, Lukashenko has boasted that Belarus is playing host to dozens of Russian nuclear weapons, and revealed in December that he was anticipating the arrival of new hypersonic missiles.
Belarus, which was once viewed as a “strategic buffer” between Russia and the West, is now firmly aligned with its larger neighbor, both diplomatically and militarily.
Bleak future
Advocates say it’s hard to imagine a democratic Belarus as long as Putin remains in the picture.
“You’re certainly not going to see any softening of positions while Putin is still president of Russia,” said Graham, the former Bush-era official.
The economy is another roadblock as the Ukraine war only deepens Lukashenko’s economic isolation. In 2021, Belarus imported 90 percent of the oil it consumed from Russia, according to researchers. That same year, Russia accounted for 41 percent of the country’s exports and 56.6 percent of its imports, per the Belarus Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That dependence has only increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Pulling the country away from Russia’s sphere of influence, then, could be painful — but it’s been done before, according to Alachnovič, the economist.
“Apart from Belarus, all other Central and Eastern European countries have already reoriented their econom[ies] from Russia to the West,” he said. “Poland reoriented. Bulgaria and the Baltic states reoriented. Moldova reoriented. So it’s possible to reorient.”
But democracy in Belarus shouldn’t be based on alliances with either the East or the West, said Vladzimir Astapenka, the Brussels-based representative for international and European cooperation in Tsikhanouskaya’s United Transitional Cabinet in exile.
“We need to be more independent, more autonomous and more brave, to say that we would have a president that will be supported by the people of Belarus, not by the Kremlin or by Brussels or by Washington,” he said.
Seb Starcevic contributed to this report.
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