Vitaly Portnikov: For Lukashenka Belarus is his feudal estate

As said by the Ukrainian political analyst, Lukashenka regards Belarus as his private property.

It was said by Vitaly Portnikov at a radio show of Radio Svaboda, Prague’s Accent.

“For Lukashenka Belarus is his feudal estate. It is not a state, it is a supplement to friendship. In order to maintain this estate, he is to sell something, as any landlord. He does not have many things, that is why he has to sell air. A state is a structure which is related to an interest of citizens, not an interest of a concrete feudal lord. In this respect Belarus is not a real state for me. It is an authoritarian regime, which lives on other’s money,” he said.

According to Portnikov, Russia is not a state as well, it is “an organised criminal group, though consisting of many millions of people, disguised as state institutions.” He believes that in the past even leaders of feudal states cared about national interests:

“In the times of feudalism, monarchs not only felt the right to own a certain land, but they were sensible of responsibility for its future. You won’t see that in Lukashenka or Putin, and it is the sense we are trying to instill in our leaders here in Ukraine. Any medieval feudal lord, a monarch, was to a far greater degree a statesman than Lukashenka and Putin taken together and multiplied by Nazarbayev.”