Minsk madness

The operation to force the plane to make an emergency landing on the grounds that Minsk had received a credible bomb threat was not without its consequences, and led the West to impose sanctions on the Belarusian national airline Belavia.

“Pratasevich works for Belarusian intelligence,” Lukashenko told a group of folksy-looking locals and a handful of invited journalists in a press conference that appears to have been held in a barn. “We were accused of detaining an opposition figure,” he continued, “then they imposed sanctions on us.”

Having bemoaned the injustice of Western sanctions, Lukashenko next attacked Lithuania’s decision to close its border with Belarus until at least the end of the month following repeated cases in which weather balloons were flown from Belarus into Lithuania carrying contraband cigarettes, something Vilnius ultimately concluded was a hybrid attack.

Keen to correct the record, Lukashenko claimed the Lithuanians had launched the weather balloons from Belarus themselves, having illegally crossed into the country. “Did our guys see it happen? Probably. But what of it? You imposed sanctions on us,” Lukashenko said, adding: “Let those balloons fly”.

Lukashenko then turned his attention to another neighbour, Poland, whom he accused of reneging on a deal to release several Belarusians accused of espionage to show their solidarity with Lithuania, adding that Belarus had in return been prepared to release Polish journalist Andrzej Poczobut, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence after being convicted of “inciting hatred” for his coverage of the 2020 anti-government protests in Belarus.

While paying his usual lip service to Belarus’s continued devotion to the Kremlin in the face of Western calumny — “Their goal is to crush us, along with the Russians” — and making a casual threat to Europe while referencing the Soviet victory in World War II — “Do they truly wish to relive what happened in the mid-20th century? They will not defeat us. We will defend our land alongside the Russians to the last person standing” — he nevertheless hinted that he remained open to an unspecified “big deal” with the US, as long as it aligned with Belarusian interests.

It had been such a long time since Lukashenko last publicly inveighed against his enemies in such a ridiculous manner that some had even begun to believe that the mercurial Belarusian dictator had calmed down in his dotage and was more focused on his own health. But this diatribe was a return to form reminiscent of his autocratic heyday when he would ensure that no journalist attending his press conferences would escape his wrath. It also highlighted two important issues.

First, the sanctions Lukashenko claims to pay little heed to are both working and aggravating him enormously, and that the closure of the country’s borders with Lithuania and Poland has implications for everybody in the country, not just those unlucky enough to be stuck at the sole open border crossing with Poland near Brest.

Second, Lukashenko’s renewed bluster against the West can largely be attributed to one Donald Trump, who brought the ageing autocrat back in from the cold and onto the international stage when he unilaterally began negotiating with him for the release of political prisoners earlier this year.

No longer some tinpot dictator from the 1990s living on borrowed time, but an active player in international negotiations who has the lives of Belarusian political prisoners and the safety of European air traffic in his gift, Lukashenko is suddenly able to say things such as “let those balloons fly” with total confidence in his own impunity.

Of course, the real headline here is the sensational acknowledgement that Pratasevich was a Belarusian intelligence agent. Though he has largely disappeared from the spotlight, Pratasevich nevertheless briefly resurfaced to confirm Lukashenko’s claim, about which he gave no further details. But who cares what Pratasevich says, anyway?

As one opposition figure reminded us following Luka’s revelation, it was Pratasevich who, as editor of the NEXTA Telegram channel, the main coordinator of the anti-Lukashenko street demonstrations of August 2020, set the protests up to fail by telling people only to take to the streets on Sundays.

Saying Pratasevich was a regular intelligence officer and they had to conduct a special operation to arrest him so as not to blow his cover may sound exciting but is really just hot air. In actual fact, Lukashenko only brought him up to remind everyone that sanctions were imposed for no reason.

If Lukashenko is serious about getting Western sanctions on Minsk lifted, he has no choice other than to release all the political prisoners his regime has in its gulag, and yet, in a political Catch-22 of which he is no doubt fully aware, his stockpile of opposition hostages is the only bargaining chip Lukashenko has, and is the sole reason the Trump administration would have to talk to him.

Coincidentally, the day of Lukashenko’s tirade marked exactly 50 days since opposition politician Mikalai Statkevich was abducted and reimprisoned by the Belarusian security services after refusing to be forced into exile in Lithuania. To this day, nobody knows where he is, how he is, or whether he is even alive.