‘Vernalization’ Of Lukashenka Will Bring No Result

Dear Ukrainian and Russian friends!

I mean real friends, not fake ones.

I am very glad that everyone got so excited, discussing with geniune interest that Belaruis is to become the next victim of the Kremlin regime. I am very grateful for your attention. I read your advice on how we should defend ourselves from Putin with great attention. I monitor all statements made by all political forces, who took an unexpected interest to the independence of belarus. I have only two formal remarks before we proceed to the discussion at merits.

When the analysts, publicists, journalists and even, it’s scary to think of that, politicians whom I respect reveal absolute ignorance with regard to our situation and still give priceless but totally useless advice, I feel bewildered.

Let us define several basic concepts so that we could continue our discussion.

If a friend, like Vitaliy Portnykov from Ukraine, whom I respect, calls Lukashenka his father, that is, “batka”, I become nervous and cannot understand Vitaliy. When Andrei Piotkovsky from Russia, respected by me, calls Lukashenka a father although Andrei is old enough to be the dictator’s father, I feel a severe blow inside my brain and can no longer perceive what different powerful minds write.

Meanwhile, they write about Lukashenka as a fearless fighter with Russia for the independence of Belarus, both in Ukraine and Russia.

First. I just inform, without insisting on anything, that the tendency to refer to Lukashenka as own father exists only in Ukraine and Russia, doesn’t matter territorial or immigrant. In Belarus, you could get in the face for that.

Second. Lukashenka as a guarantor of independence and counter-weight to the Kremlin is a development of the Belarusian KGB made in mid-1990s, approved by the Russian FSB. I have to admit that the development proved quite effective, mostly to fool the West and its politicians and strategists, to pull money and services out of them. But why do our Ukrainian and Russian friends buy into this? I don’t remember Belarusian democrats or independent media to have ever called Putin a leader who revived Russia and protected its sovereignty. I never heard someone calling Yanukovych a wise state figure who was forced to make a deal with Putin for the protection of the independence of Ukraine. No, please don’t take offense or outrage. Why is that you have such right and we don’t?

You are not them, those who are watching us from the Shengen zone, and do not understand anything. Why do you act like this?

Now let’s talk at merits. Yes, Belarus is likely to become the next victim of the Kremlin aggression. However, Belarus here will be just another geographical dimension of the Kremlin’s expansion, putting it even simpler - another stage of escalation of the war in Europe. The war, which is being led against Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians, against our freedom. And the results of this war are already visible in our space, moreover, in favor of the Kremlin. Our space of the struggle for freedom has already been broken. It has been infected with that very imperial stuff, and some unclear arrogance towards us, Belarusians, and hostility to each other.

Our Ukrainian friends, who called thief Yanukovych a dictator, although he, fortunately, did not manage to complete the system of repression like in Belarus, somehow quickly and for a long time fell in love with the real dictator Lukashenka, with absolutely irrational love. He also supports the occupation of the Ukrainian territories, and is making a fortune in the war against Ukraine, but the love of Ukrainians towards him does not wear out. Truth be told that love is evil. Ukrainian media even came up with such an amusing argument to somehow explain their tender feelings towards the dictator: Belarusians are like idiots and, unlike us Ukrainians, want to live under a dictatorship. No, of course they don’t say so directly, but for some reason, this is how their analytical thought is perceived, that Ukraine fought for freedom, while Belarus did not.

Although this may seem offensive, there is a part of the truth in this, but it relates not to the fact that we didn’t fight, but to our several failures to grab victory. Herein, we did fight, not only for our freedom, but for yours as well.

In the maidans of 2004-2005, of 2013-2014 there were not just Belarusians, but thousands of Belarusians. Because they knew they were fighting for their own freedom. Hundreds of the Belarusian national flags in the center of Kyiv in those revcolutionary days are worth a lot. Even today, sorry to remind you, there are Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine.

In Russia, Belarusians participated in many demonstrations as well. However, in Russia it was more difficult to identify the brothers by spirits and fighters for your and our freedom. Still, Belarusians did help by their participation in the protest against the Kremlin bandits, especially when Boris Nemtsov was alive.

As for the reverse stories, it seems hard to recall any. Not in this millenium.

I remember nationalists from UNA-UNSO came to support us on Freedom Day back in 1996. Brave guys, they turned cars upside down. However, Lukashenka’s gorrillas beat them, arrested for several days, and that was it – we have seen no Ukrainians at our demonstration since then. I mean, journalists, observers came, but not with flags, not in the full strength, not till the end. So Belarusians have to hoist the flag of Ukraine by themselves, and defend your and our freedom, and go to jail for that. Just recently, on January 22, Lukashenka put activists Volha Nikalaichyk and Dzianis Urbanovich to jail for honouring the memory of Mikhail Zhyzneuski, the Belarusian who died in the Maidan for Ukraine.

Dissidents from Russia, too, somehow after several administrative arrests in the 90s in Lukashenka prisons have not been so eager to take part in protests. Lukashenka was too small for them, now they have Putin.

We had Squares, but you were not there with us.

Another interesting detail is that a huge number of non-Belarusian people, from Kremlin businessman Vladislav Baumgertner to Russian dissidents, from American citizen Emmanuel Zeltser to Ukrainian writer Serhii Zhadan, went through the Lukashenka prisons. The number of Ukrainian, Russian and other not our businessmen cannot be counted. Many of them vowed - I heard that myself- just let me go out of here, Lukashenka will definitely go to jail along with all his camarilla. Not a single high-profile international case has been heard with the accusation of the Lukashenka regime, even if it is not related to violation of human rights, but at least to a raider seizure of businesses of the very same businessmen who have been and will be in prisons in Belarus.

Belarus was captured by some inexplicable “Lysenkoism”. There was such a, allow me to say so, academician in the Soviet 30s, who actively introduced the idea of the “vernalization of winter crops”, i.e. cold treatment of wheat grains in order to “cultivate” the resistance to winter in them. As a result, the grain perished, yields declined catastrophically, but the academician continued to defend his methods of “cultivation”. Now an active “vernalization” of Lukashenka by various European lysenkas is going on, not for the first time and with a predictable negative result, but see how many people ihave something to do and receive wages. But this will not help us. We are Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. We are talking here only about the three Slavic republics, although the trouble of dictatorial regimes has come in almost all the republics of the former USSR.

It’s difficult, of course, to advise something to our closest neighbors, especially if they don’t really want to notice us, much less take some advice, but I will take a risk to repeat the thesis, which for me remains an axiom:

Without the liberation of Belarus from dictatorship, there will be no free Ukraine, let alone free Russia.

You can argue, you can ignore, disagree, but just remember that.

We do not have much time to manage to try to connect the space and islands of the struggle for freedom into something, if not a single, then at least meaningful.

To do this, it is necessary to understand first that only thanks to the democratic opposition today there is an independent Belarus, that only democratic changes in Belarus can become a guarantee for the protection of our independence. To understand that only as a result of Lukashenka’s policy the conversations about the threat of Belarus’s Anschluss by Russia became possible. Lukashenka has already sold and continues to sell Belarus to the Kremlin, and the point of no return may soon pass, beyond which the threat to our independence and to the security of Ukraine will become real.

The locomotive of our common struggle today, of course, is Ukraine. It would be nice if serious analytical, strategic works about the real political situation in Belarus appeared there. So far, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I can only name the Maidan of the Foreign Affairs, who is consistent in his analysis of the situation in Belarus.

That's interesting, the Belarusians know the political landscape in Ukraine and Russia very well, and our neighbors are unlikely to name a dozen politicians in Belarus, except for their pet Lukashenka.

And the Ukrainian authorities deal mainly with the dictatorial regime, they are also trying to engage in “vernalization”, while at the same time insulting Belarusians with their condescension. It’s hard to take the words of the ambassador of Ukraine to Belarus Ihor Kizim that he, together with the Belarusian authorities, picked up a calmer Ukrainian channel for broadcasting in Belarus, since “the Belarusian audience is not ready for such an information bomb” that is spinning in Ukraine, as anything else but an insult. He is somehow not embarrassed by the fact that he cooperated with the regime in defining an information channel for Belarusians, who in his understanding have not yet reached the high level of development of Ukrainians. This is just one example of misunderstanding and disrespect.

We are closely following the elections in Ukraine, with envy. With envy, because we have had no elections for a long time. We expect that these elections will help to strengthen the independence and statehood of Ukraine, that Ukraine will form as a European state with a European scale of values with respect to democracy and human rights.

And we expect that under the new leadership, Ukraine will finally become the regional leader of liberation from the Soviet past and current dictatorships.

In other words - for your and our freedom!

Andrei Sannikov, specially for Charter97.org