Political Analyst: Putin Offered Biden a Solution to the Lukashenka Problem

One should expect more synchronization between Russia and the West in this direction.

Political analyst Arsen Sivitsky, director of the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies (Minsk), believes the Kremlin has long had its plans on the problem of Lukashenka's illegitimate power, and it may well find common ground with the West on the issue.

Before the summit in Geneva, "the Kremlin was interested in offering a kind of solution to the Belarusian crisis, to sell this scenario to Washington DC to get the green light for such an intervention and avoid new Western sanctions," Sivitsky said in a commentary for Naviny.by.

By the end of last year, according to the expert, Moscow had run out of the tools of political and diplomatic pressure on the Belarusian leader to force him to fulfil the secret Sochi agreements of September 2020. The analyst explains that they planned a national dialogue and transformation of the political system by introducing a parliamentary-presidential system, "which de facto means that Lukashenka is leaving the political stage".

At that time, the Kremlin did not venture into tougher tools for fear of Washington's reaction to such unilateral action.

In his opinion, Biden's comment after the talks "shows that Putin offered a certain variant of solving the Belarusian problem".

So what's next? Now, we should expect "increasingly synchronized" actions of Russia and the West on the Belarusian issue, Sivitsky assumes. He predicts that "the Kremlin will openly toughen its position with regard to the official Minsk".

In this case, "we can expect a certain collapse of the Belarusian economy in autumn, which will trigger "the full-scale protests throughout the country". It could be a favourable background for the Kremlin to interfere and "force Aliaksandr Lukashenka to resign," says Sivitsky.

He assumes that Putin may soon hold another meeting with Lukashenka. He will voice "the last Moscow warning" and offer "guarantees in exchange for the implementation of the Sochi agreements."

"Aliaksandr Lukashenka has fallen into a geopolitical trap - both because of his own strategic mistakes, and because the Kremlin has been actively leading him into this trap," said the political analyst.

"The story with the plane has become a "point of no return in terms of positioning Lukashenka's regime on the international arena," said Sivitsky.

Under such conditions, the West needs to solve the Lukashenka problem quickly. It can delegate that to Russia on condition of obeying certain red lines (at least formal preservation of Belarusian sovereignty), summarized Sivitsky.