Who Has Zero Friends?

When this regime ingloriously ends its days, the new Belarus will quickly find a common language with the whole world.

“Pay attention to my phrase: we have no friends in the world,” said Aliaksandr Lukashenka on the Minsk Ski Track last Saturday. For many years he had been trumpeting a multi-vector foreign policy, intended to turn Minsk into Helsinki-2, and pompously announced a strategic partnership with important global players.

Now it turns out that it was all a bluff or went to pieces. The multi-vector approach has come to end, the donation of stability has disappeared, in short - sovereign men have found themselves at a broken trough.

How did you come to such a life?

After all, a year ago, for example, after Lukashenka's fraternization with the US Secretary of State, tankers with American oil were sailing across the ocean. Triumph, a bow from the most powerful power on the planet! And now Washington has imposed sanctions and could easily pinch his fingers even more. What, the Americans went into a quirk, did they start to dislike the Belarusians so sharply?

No, our ordinary citizens did not annoy the States with anything. The hitch is in the way the Belarusian authorities held the elections. And they were held with special cynicism, out of bounds, large-scale falsification of the voting results.

When the outraged people took to the streets, the regime unleashed repression on them, unprecedented in scale and cruelty. The West is simply obliged to react to such things at least to "save face."

Europe was so fussy about Belarus, hoping to re-educate the dictatorship: it came up with the Eastern Partnership program, gave money, encouraged it for peacekeeping (remember, Merkel herself flew in, and the Belarusian leader gave her a bouquet?).

But even soft Brussels was forced to escalate, not recognizing Lukashenka as the legitimate leader after the 2020 elections. Because the regime, which had never conducted electoral campaigns with white gloves before, this time threw away all decency.

And in order not to admit that they made a mess and caused the people's anger, the authorities began to blame everything on foreign puppeteers who, they say, want to seize, tear, and plunder blue-eyed Belarus.

Official Minsk, disdaining the old wisdom that one should get along with neighbors, began to blame Vilnius, Warsaw, Kyiv. And what, did you expect warmth and affection in return?

Ukraine was accused of destabilizing our situation, that tons of weapons are coming from there. But here, the ends clearly don't meet since the valiant Belarusian border guards report that the border is locked. It is clear that Kyiv is outraged by the vain.

With the Lithuanians, the Belarusian authorities are completely at loggerheads. How - Vilnius sheltered Tsikhanouskaya with the entourage. The fact that she was simply squeezed out of Belarus by blackmail is somehow not remembered.

Yes, and they also decided to punish the Lithuanians by transferring the export of oil products (and then, probably, potash fertilizers) from Klaipeda to Russian ports, where they are transported much further. This is called: Cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Now a diplomatic war with Poland is flaring up. Minsk began with the expulsion of the Polish consul from Brest - and off it went. The consul is accused of participating in an event at which they praised the Home Army officer Rice, who killed Belarusians, although the Polish side claims that this name was not even mentioned there, and there was no scent of anti-Belarusian at the event.

The fact is that an exchange of blows began, the sides began to expel diplomats one by one, and Minsk is clearly going to escalate the conflict. And many observers conclude that the Belarusian authorities simply found a reason to find fault with the Poles, to take revenge on Warsaw for the sanctions, and support of the opposition.

Now in power circles, the idea is floating around to establish a "day of national unity" by appointing it for September 17 or November 14. Both dates are associated with the partition of Poland between Stalin and Hitler in 1939.

I'm not even talking about the fact that the proposed new "holiday" itself looks ridiculous in a situation when the authorities are not going to enter into dialogue with opponents, that is, with millions of people who demand new presidential elections and the restoration of justice in the country.

The statement that we have no friends provokes the following question: has love already passed with Russia and China, all violets died off?

However, songs about fraternal integration with an eastern neighbor have always been fake. But now the Kremlin, by all appearances, has really decided to put the squeeze on, taking advantage of the fact that after the elections the leadership of Belarus burned bridges in relations with the West and thereby made the country even more vulnerable to imperial inclinations from the East.

And Beijing is probably unhappy with the fact that Minsk broke pots in relations with Europe because the Chinese need Belarus as a link on the way to European markets.

In general, and indeed - it cuts both ways. So to spoil relations with the whole world and especially with neighbors - this, of course, must be able to.

Only the point, as we see, is not in the character of the Belarusians but in the nature of the political regime.

Of the regime that thinks in terms of looking for enemies, which sees underground mines and conspiracies everywhere.

Of the regime which, defending his "sacred" right to thrash with clubs, torture, and imprison citizens who only demand fair elections, is ready to show a middle finger to all normal countries that are terrified of such arts.

No friends? Well, who wants to be friends with the unscrupulous, grumpy, derailed power that spits like a camel on all four sides?

The Belarusians, for the most part, are benevolent, tolerant people. And when this regime ingloriously ends its days, the new Belarus, I am sure, will quickly find a common language with the whole world.

Aliaksandr Klaskouski, Narodnaya Volya