On closeness
Lukashenka has never been this close to Putin. Over the past two years, since mass protests started in Belarus, the number of their meetings has exceeded all diplomatic limits, even for countries that form a union. Even very close friends rarely meet so often nowadays — unless they live on the same floor. The rhetoric has also changed completely. Nothing seems to divide Putin and Lukashenka now — nor gas price coordination, nor forged phytosanitary certificates, nor tax manoeuvring, nor signing of union agreements. This is because they have a major common interest: circumventing sanctions.
During an extended government meeting on 16 December, as he was announcing Putin’s latest visit to Minsk, Lukashenka explained why their bilateral meetings had become so frequent: “Earlier, when meeting with the President, the Russian leadership, we discussed issues of a tactical nature. There was no way out of it because Russia and Belarus were subjected to terrible sanctions. There are a whopping 900 sanctions against Russia… And against us as well, so that, as they say, Russia doesn’t circumvent these sanctions through us. So we had to meet up during the year to react to the situation that developed as a result of the collective West’s pressure on us. That is, these were mostly pressing issues of a tactical nature. Nonetheless, at each meeting we tried to look into the future through these issues”.
According to Lukashenka, this year’s trying situation is a result of Western pressure and not of the war that Russia started. In the past, it was also the West to blame and not the massive political persecutions unleashed in Belarus.