Lukashenko the Loser

"Did you see President Lukashenko and TVC President Poptsov on TV?" asks Natalia Gevorkian in Kommersant:

The wonderful, kind, sincere, and unbiased Lukashenko. An angel, simply an angel. He made an appearance just for the visit. With persistence worthy of the best, Moscow continues to cajole leaders who have no future.

In the eyes of the Russian leadership, these relations with Lukashenko, who is considered an outcast by normal people, probably have a specific, momentary objective. For example, the de facto formation of a union of the two countries by a single ruble space, which brings along with it a dominant Russian presence in the Belarussian economy. A liberal empire à la Chubais, peaceful economic expansion.

It remains only to convince Lukashenko that this will be good for him too. Of course, he's not very likable, but he's not an idiot. And he knows all about the levers of government that he will personally lose in this case. They might remind him of the risks of losing everything according to the Ukrainian scenario, because this time, the West has already decided not to conceal this. It turns out that if Russia stressed its real presence in Belarus, the West would reconsider its
democratization program.

Read the rest.