The U.S. Should Recognize Belarus’s Government in Exile

Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine continues in the nation’s eastern Donbas region, threatening to spread south and west through Moldova into the pro-Russian breakaway state of Transnistria. Moscow’s forces are consolidating their military efforts along the Black Sea, with no credible peace talks on the horizon.

Amid this slog, Kyiv’s friends can do more than supply arms, intelligence, and prayers. America and her allies should open an aggressive diplomatic front on Russia’s isolated flank by recognizing a Belarus government in exile led by the dissident Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

Challenging the legitimacy of Moscow’s client in Minsk will not only undermine the legitimacy of Russian troops occupying Belarus but will also buoy opponents of Putin’s ally, Alexander Lukashenko, who has allowed his nation to be drawn into the war on Ukraine. READ MORE

Meet Vladimir Putin’s Biggest Accomplice in His War on Ukraine

Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has turned his country into a Russian vassal state. It didn’t have to be this way.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is criminal on multiple counts, but some of them should be leveled at one of his main accomplices: Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. 

Image: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin following their meeting, in Moscow, Russia on February 18, 2022. (Sergey Guneev / Sputnik via AP)

Russia’s military is executing an unprovoked and unprecedented attack on a peaceful neighbor on many fronts, from the air and sea. The land war, however, would not be as effective or lethal were it not for Lukashenko providing a front along Belarus’s southern border, not far from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. 

Indeed, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky put it bluntly—Belarus is “not neutral,” he said—when weighing potential negotiations in the country’s capital, Minsk. “Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku—we proposed all that to the Russian side,” he said. “Any other city would work for us, too, in a country from whose territory rockets are not being fired.” Belarus is, in fact, far from neutral. It is complicit with the Russian attacks, and Zelensky has reckoned that any negotiations on its land would be on enemy territory. 

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There’s nothing like using cheap Russian oil and an iron fist to stay in office

All-star authoritarians are a ruble a dozen in Russia these days. Vladimir Putin leads the pack, of course, but there are plenty of local and regional tough guys running their neighborhoods and governments like mob bosses. Many of them are direct offshoots of Putin’s United Russia party, some are even worse. Ultra-nationalists in the far east of the country are protesting their inability to run their own government and local syndicates, complaining that Moscow insists on central control over the means of corruption.

Russia is not the only former Soviet state that is stuck with megalomaniacal overlords. Next door and related, Belarus — the country also known as White Russia — is a paragon of parasitic politics. Run by the same guy since 1994, Belarus is heading toward “elections” next month where the main opposition candidates have been disqualified or arrested.

A vlogger, a banker and a diplomat were all running against incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko and have dubiously found their way into the political penalty box, or jail. In their stead, their spouses have stepped in to strut their candidacies and keep the erstwhile candidates’ messages alive. Surprisingly, there is an early anti-establishment groundswell coalescing around the candidacy of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of popular Belarus online journalist vlogger Sergei Tikhanovsky. She been dismissed by Lukashenko, who said the demanding presidential pressures of governing would cause Svetlana to “collapse, poor thing.” READ MORE