He Is Not A Boy To You

Aliaksandr Lukashenka could not hold his patience.

He was supposed to talk about the Russian-Belarusian relations on Saturday, in Sochi, with Vladimir Putin. And two days earlier, he was only supposed to speak before the deputies of the previous and new convocations in order to greet some new faces, and say farewell to the others. As a result, the speech to the deputies still turned into a monologue about the relations with Russia.

No wonder, after all, on December 8, on the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the treaty on the creation of a “union state”, Putin and Lukashenka should sign an integration program. In any case, they have been talking about this for a year now. They vaguely promised some unthinkable dozens and hundreds of roadmaps, some of which, according to the officials of both countries, have already been agreed upon, and some even have no such prospects. And the meeting in Sochi has already been scheduled. And Belarusians in social networks write on the avatars “I am for independence!”.

So, Aliaksandr Lukashenka assured everyone that there is no threat to the sovereignty of Belarus: “Remember: I'm not a boy who has worked as the “president” for some 3-4-5 years. I’ve had enough! And I don’t want to cross out everything that I did together with you, with the people: I created a sovereign, independent state, so how could I put it in a box with a cross at the top and throw it away somewhere, or transfer to someone? This will never happen.”

Lukashenka said that no one is going to capture Belarus, no one is attempting at its independence, which means that it is foolish to voluntarily give this independence to someone. Once again, he was publicly offended by the opposition: “You see, they are more concerned about being “independent” than you or me. They fear that we will sign some documents that are not in the interests of Belarus. No one will ever sign documents that will harm us. Today, the negotiations with Russia do not include issues related to politics, diplomacy, and so on ... If someone is worried that tomorrow there will be a common parliament, there is not even any talk on this subject. If someone is worried that tomorrow we will have a president not Lukashenka, but someone else (I mean now, without an election), don’t worry either. We do not engage in political dialogue. More than a year ago, we agreed with President Putin on friendly terms. I tell him: we will not manage these issues if we start discussing them.”

He explained: on December 6, Prime Ministers and their assistants will work in Sochi. And only the next day - “we will meet and see what the prime ministers and group leaders have worked out, and, if possible, we will make a decision”. But we are talking, according to Aliaksandr Lukashenka, exclusively about the economic agenda. And, apparently, the economic agenda is not at all integration issues: “What further integration can we talk about if we do not have an agreement on natural gas supplies today? Although we agreed on this a long time ago. And our governments have failed these agreements. This was not the fault of the Belarusian government. That is, we have a New Year tomorrow, and we do not have an agreement on the volume and prices of natural gas supplies. Unresolved oil issues. Even the elementary issue has not yet been resolved, the dirty oil. We think something, decide. And they pretend that this dirty oil was not there. But we have failed the GDP mainly due to oil problems. Because petrochemicals are still tied to our refining.”

The rhetoric is clear. It’s no worth waiting for the sensations on December 8. Most likely, everything will go according to the already familiar scenario: public hugs, vows of eternal friendship and partnership, surprise about integration issues - “we weren’t going to.” And it's good that they were not going to. Dmitry Medvedev will be appointed chief of sensations - this is because he was the first to speak last year about the implementation of the “union agreement”: a single issuing center, court, customs, and accounting chamber. This was said on December 13, 2018 in Brest at a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers, which began with a discussion of the innocent topic of roaming. In Belarus, this statement was perceived as a threat of coercion to integration. A year later, Aliaksandr Lukashenka assures that he is not going to sign any political agreements with Moscow, and at the same time, Dmitry Medvedev at a press-conference urged Belarusians not to be afraid of reducing sovereignty due to integration.

Apparently, this is how they decided to distribute the roles: Putin is silent, Medvedev demands an immediate rapprochement, Lukashenka publicly resists.

As a result, nothing happens, but a large and complex political process is imitated, and journalists and political scientists have something to discuss and analyze. The performance deserves applause.

True, on the same day, Aliaksandr Lukashenka replaced the head of his administration and appointed Ihar Siarheyenka, the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB, instead. But this is more like fighting not with an external threat, but with an internal one.

Iryna Khalip, Novaya Gazeta