Russian expert: Lukashenko failed to impose its own script

Belarusian regime will be forced to play by the rules proposed by the European Union or Moscow.

This was stated by a Russian expert on relations with the CIS Kirill Koktysh in an interview with Voice of Russia.

- Mr. Koktysh thank you very much for joining us here. Now I’m interested in your assessment on the future of the relations between Belarus and the European Union. How do you see that?

- Well, current relations are quite complicated. That means that Lukashenko provoked the European Union to impose new round of sanctions against him and the European Union has the moral rightness to do so, because actually doing that as a key issue was a challenge to Europe. Balancing travels the East was quite clear, Lukashenko wanted Russia to compensate the possible losses if he would suffer from the European sanctions. And also he wanted to compel Russia not to force him to follow his own obligations that he made in December last year when he got quite large Russian credits.

So, it was quite classical, quite usual sub-Russian game of Belorussia between to use a proposed more European power and Russia more or less cynical and so far not successful because Russia disagreed to pay and considers a current European-Belarus confrontation to be the internal matter of Minsk and Brussels.

- When we are talking about sanctions, I understand that you are saying that Europe has a moral right to do so, but do they have any legal grounds to apply sanctions to someone who is not a part of the European Union or even not the member of the Council of Europe?

- Well, it is a right of any sovereign country to decide which people it would like to welcome on its own territory and what money it would like to consider as legal and clear on its own territory. So, it is simply the right of the owner, the owner should decide whom he wants as his guest and whom he wouldn’t like.

- You see Mr. Likashenko going on with his game of bringing the European Union and Russia against each other, playing with the relations of those two large international players and is he going to successful in that?

- Well, so far he is not successful. You see, this is the fifth or the sixth time that Lukashenko tries to play the same game and he guesses that his bonuses, his wins are clashing together the European Union and Russia. But this time it seems that Russia and the European Union, they didn’t want to play the usual game. Mr. Putin has already stressed that this is a bilateral conflict but the conflict which in no way affects the integrative projects in which Belorussia works together with Russia. And the European Union so far, avoiding the broad and the most harmful measures, still imposes quite painful special measures that really affect the Russian leadership but so far do not affect Belarus. So far we have no signs to say that Minsk this time was successful in imposing its own rules of the game, it was first to play the rules that were more or less proposed by the European Union and Moscow.