"Lukashenko Might End Up Overplaying His Hand"

Pashinyan's victory served as a wake-up call for the dictator.

The decisive victory of the party led by Nikol Pashinyan in the parliamentary elections marked yet another geopolitical defeat for the Kremlin. The election results confirm Armenia’s course toward integration into the EU and a departure from Russia’s orbit.

What does Pashinyan’s victory mean for Belarusians? What signal does it send us?

The website Charter97.org discussed this with former political prisoner and coordinator of the “European Belarus” civic campaign Andrei Voinich:
— We should start by saying that, in principle, everyone is already fed up with Russia. And in this context, thanks to the Kremlin, Russia as a whole—as well as the Russian people—has effectively been left without any allies.

If we’re talking about Armenia now, a very large number of Armenians used to support Russia. But after seeing the chaos Russia caused in Georgia and is now causing in Ukraine, as well as in other countries around the world, the Armenians understood everything and turned away. They were very lucky to have found a truly worthy leader who cares about the Armenian people.
For Belarusians, this victory means that the country can change course. We see that Belarusians are no longer merely skeptical, but quite aggressive, even treating the Kremlin with a certain contempt and disdain. At the same time, Belarusians do not like Lukashenko. Neither in Belarus nor abroad do Belarusians like Lukashenko, nor have they ever liked him. Lukashenko loves only himself.
This means that right now, at any moment, if a true leader emerges—and such leaders exist— I’m not talking about those so-called “democratic” forces that just squander grants and steal from ordinary Belarusians abroad, but about those leaders who can truly inspire people—Belarus will change course. For this to happen, a number of circumstances and facts are needed to facilitate it.

Pashinyan’s victory itself serves as a good example for Belarusians of how a country can change in an instant. Of course, we need to work toward that moment.

— In fact, dictator Lukashenko remains Putin’s only ally in Europe. What do Pashinyan’s victory and Armenia’s course toward the EU mean for Lukashenko?

— First of all, I wouldn’t say that Lukashenko is Putin’s ally. Lukashenko is more like Putin’s concubine, as I would put it, who is forced to do certain things for the sake of his own survival in tandem with Putin. The same applies to the whole world, actually. You can’t say today that someone like Emomali Rahmon is Putin’s ally, or the leader of any other Asian country. Right now, Russia is either being milked or laughed at.

For Lukashenko, Pashinyan’s victory means, first of all, yet another fear to add to his paranoid collection. And second, a wake-up call that the democratic world is uniting and more and more participants are joining this world. And this means that Lukashenko—regardless of whether Putin is nearby or some other dictator—is not simply eternal. He will not be able to hold on to power because there are far more people—including within the country—who want to live for themselves, for the future, and not for Lukashenko, than Lukashenko shows on TV.

— Armenia took advantage of Russia’s weakness, as it became bogged down in the war against Ukraine. Could such an opportunity arise for Belarus in the near future?

— I hope that history will present such an opportunity to Belarusians in the near future. Any more or less significant event could serve as a catalyst: ranging from the death of Lukashenko or Putin to the dictator’s schizophrenia, which would force him, to put it bluntly, to press the red button. Either dictator Lukashenko’s schizophrenia or Putin’s schizophrenia.

We can clearly see now how Belarus is provoking Europe—specifically Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland—with its petty, nasty, aggressive provocations. These are migrants pushing their way across the border, weather balloons, and so on. These, by the way, also include drones flying into EU territory from Belarus.

Lukashenko may have played his hand too close to the fire. This could become not just a trigger, but a catalyst for Ukraine, as it promised, to respond not just symmetrically, but ten times more forcefully responds not to Belarus, but specifically to Lukashenko. And this, in turn, could become a catalyst for a change in power and for a normal, forward-looking course for our country.

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