Their meetings are not similar to the meetings of the heads of state – they are rather the meetings of the tsar and his heydisan – analyst Vadim Mazheyka

2023-09-16 15:44:22

Briefly:

There are no significant legal advances in “integration” today. Friendship with North Korea — in terms of image, it is hard to imagine what could be worse. It seems that Lukashenka greatly exaggerated his role in the crisis surrounding Prigozhin’s rebellion. In general, the history of the Wagnerites in Belarus is coming to an end.

— It has already become a certain tradition when, discussing the results of another meeting between Lukashenka and Putin, commentators ask the question – why do they meet so often?

– It is quite natural that they meet very often – simply because the level of cooperation between Belarus and Russia is quite tight, and they have enough issues that need to be resolved. As at work meetings – there is always something to discuss. But it should be noted that it has long since ceased to look like a meeting of the heads of independent states – it is rather a meeting of the king and his subordinate Hayasin. Some feudal flavor is definitely present here.

– Something concrete can be noted in the results of this last meeting?

– One can notice such a regularity that if some serious decisions are made at such meetings (such as, for example, the deployment of nuclear weapons), then they are never reported immediately. We learn about some really important decisions only later.

And now what was voiced in the public space did not look very original. All these words that Lukashenka wants more economic cooperation in various directions are not new, he always wants as much economic cooperation as possible.

Vadym Mazheyka

Again, the topic of how many percent of the “union” integration has already materialized. Lukashenka said that 80 percent has already been fulfilled – but we heard from him about 90 and 95 percent before. That is, these numbers are not worthy of serious attention, because it is not clear how and who is measuring here. It is possible to implement 80 percent of something insignificant, and not agree on 20 percent of the most important thing. It seems to me that this indicates that there are no significant legal advances in “integration” today.

— If there was something new and original, it was Lukashenka’s reasoning about the desire to cooperate with North Korea, “to think about three-way cooperation,” as he put it. What does this say about the current state of Belarus in international relations, its image in the world?

– Friendship with North Korea – it is hard to imagine what can be a mountain in terms of image. But Lukashenka grabs every opportunity. After all, Belarusian-North Korean relations have never been significant, mutual trade is minimal. North Korea, to put it mildly, is not a rich country, you won’t get money there. By the way, official trade between Russia and the DPRK is almost zero.

So “making friends for three” means the following. If North Korea will supply Russia with its shells for the Russian army, and in return Russia can simply pay, or can settle for some service, build something, for example. And Lukashenka, perhaps, hopes to enter here, so that this “favor” is done with the participation of Belarus.

– Can we say that now a definite point has been made regarding the presence of the Wagnerites in Belarus? And what do you think of the talk that Putin might be angry with Lukashenka for his excessively bold interpretation of the events surrounding the Prigozhin rebellion?

— Lukashenka always exaggerates his role in international politics. In Valero Karbalevich’s book, there is a whole chapter about how Lukashenka turned some random meetings “on the sidelines” of various international conferences into big and important negotiations. It’s the same here, it seems that Lukashenka greatly exaggerated his role in the crisis surrounding Prigozhin’s rebellion.

In reality, it was really nothing more than a temporary platform, all this rhetoric about the “walks” of the Wagnerians to Poland did not translate into any actions. So the decrease in the number of Wagnerites in Belarus is going on its own way. A small number of them may become part of the Belarusian security forces, but in general it seems that this story is coming to an end. And rather, simply under the influence of Prigozhin’s death, and not as a result of any negotiations between Lukashenka and Putin.

– How should we evaluate the relatively conciliatory statements that Lukashenko and other representatives of the government made in recent weeks to Belarus’ western neighbors?

– In recent months, both Minsk and Vilnius and Warsaw have made a certain de-escalation, at least in public statements. It seemed to me that Lukashenka might not be against the closing of the border, because perhaps he hoped that in that case Beijing would put more pressure on Vilnius and Warsaw, and not on Minsk.

But as a result, we see that both sides stopped at threats, but concrete actions did not come. The Poles responded symmetrically to the incident with the Belarusian helicopters, and the Belarusian Ministry of Defense did not inflame the conflict. We agreed that the score is “1-1” and that’s it.

Why did this de-escalation happen? Perhaps both sides are more comfortable only threatening, but not taking real dangerous actions, such as closing the border, which could lead to concrete economic and logistical losses.