Valery Karbalevich: Everybody remembers that “the Crimea story” started from Russian military base on peninsula

 During the recent presidential elections, Alexander Lukashenko received a quite high vote of confidence – 83.5%. Some of your colleagues with opposition views think the serious unrest and domestic instability in neighboring Ukraine played a significant role here.

Indeed, the Ukrainian crisis has frightened the Belarusian society and the demand for stability and strong power has grown in Belarus. Though Belarus is suffering a grave economic crisis (since early 2015 the GDP has dropped by 3.7%), Lukashenko still enjoys the confidence of a part of the Belarusian society amid the developments in Ukraine. 

The EU’s positive assessment of the elections in Belarus demonstrates obvious warming of the Brussels-Minsk relations. How would you explain it and does Belarus still hope to sign an analogue of the Association Agreement with the EU?    

The EU’s assessment of the Belarusian elections was negative on the whole. The international observation mission only pointed out that the progress was restricted to the lack of reprisals and lack of new political prisoners, unlike the post-electoral situation following the previous presidential elections. The EU and the West take it easy on the Belarusian authorities due to the new geopolitical situation that has arisen following the Ukrainian crisis. Firstly, in the acute geopolitical confrontation, international crisis, aggravation of the West-Russia relations, geopolitics comes to the fore, with the issue of values (democracy, human rights, political prisoners) paling into insignificance. Belarus tries to remain neutral on today's important geopolitical issue - the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This was somewhat unexpected for the West, because Minsk is the closest ally of Moscow. So, both the EU and the US appreciate that fact. Secondly, in practical terms, Minsk can hope for changes in the relations with the West, because the conflict in Ukraine has become a pain in the neck of the United States and Europe. Given the threats to the gas transit to the EU via Ukraine, the Belarusian stability is growing in price for not only Belarusian people but also for Europe. Thirdly, amid the losses in the long-lasting armed conflict in Ukraine, the Belarusian political regime does not seem so odious to Europe as it did before, and Lukashenko is not such a "bad guy" if compared to Putin. Nevertheless, the analyst thinks the agenda does not include such an issue as signing of the Association Agreement between Belarus and the EU. The agenda includes only the issue of preparation of an agreement on good-neighborly relations given that the Belarus-EU relations lack a legal framework so far.        

Over the past few years, President Lukashenko has managed to maneuver between Russia and the West. How would you assess the prospects of the Belarusian complementarism?  

The relations with Russia have been the key priority in the foreign policy of Belarus over the 21 years of Lukashenko's presidency. As regards the West, Belarus has been in an ideological and diplomatic conflict with the West, except for the short period from 2008 to 2010. For now the relations with the West are normalizing very slowly and the EU is going to lift the sanctions against the Belarusian officials for four months only. Nevertheless, there will be attempts to balance between Russia and the West. It is early to say what will come out of this, because President Lukashenko is reluctant to conduct economic and political reforms. 

Do the further expansion of the EEU and the participation of Belarus in that integration project meet the interests of Belarus?     

Belarus benefits from the EEU because the EEU allows Belarus to buy Russian energy resources at preferential prices. But now the benefit is not so big because Russia has become the source of problems for Belarus’ economy. As the Russian ruble depreciated, the Belarusian economy faced collapse. The EEU expansion is not very important for Minsk, because the share of other CIS countries in the trade and economic relations with Belarus is not big.    

Some experts think that Moscow uses the CSTO as a tool of pressure on the Central Asian countries. Do you think Belarus’ CSTO membership ensures the country’s full security?   

The CSTO is Russia’s tool of military-political control over the post-Soviet space. But in terms of security, Belarus gives higher priority to the relations with Russia than to the CSTO membership. First of all, Russia supplies Belarus with new weapons on preferential terms. Over the past two years, the military-political relations between Belarus and Russia are turning into a burden, because the foreign policy of Russia is becoming more and more unpredictable. Such alliance weighs heavily upon Minsk. Belarus has a neutral stand on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and the West. The recent acute problem in the Belarus-Russia relationship is the possible deployment of a Russian military base in Belarus. Minsk comes out against deployment of the base because it would threaten the military sovereignty of Belarus and might spoil its relations with the West. Everybody remembers that “the Crimea story” started from the Russian military base on the peninsula.