The worldview of many EU politicians is very simple, a good-evil scheme – and the roles in the Belarus-Poland case are clearly divided: there in Minsk an evil dictator who abuses refugees for his political agenda and is nothing more than a puppet of the Kremlin is. Here the free EU, which is at the mercy of malicious autocrats from the East, like the refugees.
The only thing that is true about this picture: The situation in Belarus is actually more and more like a repressive dictatorship. After the opposition, Alexander Lukashenko also radically silenced the uncomfortable part of the press and civil society.
But Lukashenko was not a democrat in earlier years – not even when the EU wanted to break him out of friendship with Russia in an “Eastern Partnership”, with a lot of financial support.
The Minsk autocrat gratefully accepted the financial injections from the Europeans and at the same time obtained cheap raw materials from his Russian friends. “Oil for kisses” was the name of this rocking policy, which the dictator would still successfully practice today if his own dissatisfied population had not driven him completely into the arms of Moscow in 2020. People there distrust him because he is considered unpredictable and uncontrollable. He only recently showed this when he drove a powerful Kremlin-loyal newspaper out of the country, with only meek protests from the supposedly dominant Moscow. The dictator is a shirt-sleeved strategist even in times of personal distress. He induced the majority of the leaders of the democratic opposition directed against him to flee to the EU, where he can portray them perfectly as “controlled by the West” in relation to his Russian ally. He makes perfect use of the paranoia of the Russian political establishment in front of “Western agents”.
He now also practices exploiting psychological weaknesses in relation to the refugee issue. He recognized the EU’s double standards with regard to refugees, towards whom one likes to be morally helpful as part of the “good” in the world, but in reality does not want to have them in one’s own country. The Belarusian didn’t have to do much, just announce that he would not prevent anyone from continuing to travel to the EU and would have “tourist visas” issued. There are certainly indications that the migrants in the country were helped with transport so that they do not linger in Belarus.
What is forgotten in many newspapers, despite all the demonization of Lukashenko: That is not the reason why these people come from the Middle East. They are fleeing from wars and the consequential damage caused by war in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. The underlying conflicts that destabilized their homeland took place without the participation of Belarus, but with significant involvement from the West, including EU members.
The refugees are now standing on the outer border and are repulsed with tear gas and pushbacks. While – as in an upside-down world – a government-loyal Belarus press reported tearfully about the misery of refugees. But this is not a wrong world, but ruthless geopolitics. Just as Lukashenko uses refugees for his sanctions revenge, the EU also uses it to transfer the moral responsibility for refugee misery and the causes of flight to welcome images of the enemy in the east.
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