[LINK] Three articles on the shift of Belarus away from Russia

[rfmcdonald]

First comes a report from The Moscow Times' Anna Dolgov reporting on new Belarusian legislation responding specifically to the threat of paramilitary infiltration, such as has occurred in eastern Ukraine.

Belarus has adopted a new law that states the appearance of any foreign fighters on its territory will be viewed as an act of aggression, even if they cannot be identified as regular troops.

The legislation, which takes effect on Feb. 1, seems to be Minsk's response to Russia's actions in neighboring Ukraine, where unmarked Russian troops overran Crimea prior to its annexation last spring and where Russian fighters have led pro-Moscow-separatists in the east.

According to a copy of the law published online, Minsk will view the deployment of another nation's armed groups, irregular forces, mercenaries or regular military units in the country as a military attack, regardless of whether or not it was accompanied by a declaration of war.

The package of amendments to Belarus' law on the state of war come after repeated warnings from President Alexander Lukashenko that Russia should not meddle in his country.

Next comes an article from The Guardian's Katerina Barushka noting the apparent new interest of the Belarusian government in promoting the intentionally-neglected Belarusian language. Given the language dynamics of the country, now overwhelmingly Russian-speaking on the ground, I suspect this is more important symbolically than otherwise.

Belarusian and Russian are both considered official languages of Belarus, but only 23% of the 9.67m population speaks the former, whereas more than 70.2% per cent speaks the latter. No more than 10% of Belarusians say they communicate in Belarusian in their day-to-day lives.

[. . .]

Valery Bulhakau, an editor-in-chief of a magazine Arche and a PhD in nationalism studies believes there is “a distinct growing interest in the Belarusian culture” and even goes as far as calling it a “national revival”. The language courses ““are not particularly educating, they rather represent a community, and that’s what important,” he says.

Analysts say the Ukraine crisis acted as a wake-up call for Lukashenko, who has long been a key Kremlin ally. For years, this relationship has not only been vital for Lukashenko’s grip on power, it is crucial for Belarus’s economy – around 10-15% of which relies on Russian subsidies. With such close ties between the two nations, when Moscow annexed Crimea, and Russian president Vladimir Putin justified the move by saying he would protect Russians or Russian-speakers across the world, Lukashenko was said to be rattled.

For the first time in his long rule, Lukashenko delivered part of a political speech in Belarusian in July, the day before Putin came to Minsk to commemorate the 70th anniversary of freeing Belarus from Nazi occupation. The symbolism was not lost on proponents of Belarusian language and culture.

Then, in November, he held a momentous meeting with both pro-government and independent intellectuals and writers to encourage them to promote national cultural and historical values.

Public support for Belarusian language has also shown signs of growing, as the language begins to shed its stigma. An on-going state social campaign ‘The taste of the Belarusian language’ posts billboards around Belarus with interesting words in Belarusian. And a month after an attempt to switch to using Russian-language signs on the Minsk metro, citizens convinced management to switch back to Belarusian.

Authorities have allowed such campaigns to exist and promote Belarusian, but in the sensitive political climate, the organisers of language classes and other initiatives have had to tread carefully. Though it is early days, some Belarusian nationalists believe real change is in the air.

Finally, Forbes analyst Paul Coyer notes the warming of Belarus' relations with the European Union and its western neighbours.

Last March Belarus refused Moscow’s request that it send observers to the Crimea referendum, unwilling to help Putin create any type of legal precedent that would support his claim that Russia has the right to intervene in neighboring states with Russian minorities. Lukashenko quickly recognized the election to the Ukrainian Presidency of Petro Poroshenko and received the new Ukrainian ambassador, making sure that Belarusian media gave much attention to the meeting. While criticizing Western sanctions against Russia, he refused to support Russia’s counter-sanctions against the EU, and has even done interviews on Russian opposition television in order to express support for Ukrainian territorial integrity. He has hosted Poroshenko several times since he took office last June, most recently just prior to Christmas, when he went so far as to publicly promise Poroshenko “any support” needed “within 24 hours”.

Lukashenko has gone out of his way to assert Belarusian sovereignty in the past year, indicating that he is more concerned about his neighbor to the east than those neighbors to his west. While criticizing NATO’s increased military presence in neighboring countries in order to placate Moscow, last spring the Belarusian military and troops of the Interior Ministry undertook drills aimed at countering a potential repeat in Belarus of what has occurred in eastern Ukraine. And after the meeting last month of the Security Council of Belarus, in which Lukashenko made the obligatory recitation opposing the strengthening of NATO’s forces in Poland and the Baltics, he followed that with a statement that “today’s behavior by our eastern brother cannot but cause alarm”. Several months ago, feeling the need to warn Putin against an attempt to do to Belarus what he was doing to Ukraine, Lukashenko pointedly said that he would fight any aggressor “who would arrive on Belarusian soil . . . . . even if it is Putin.” Minsk has also, for the first time, moved toward creation of full scale control of its border with Russia, and has refused a Russian suggestion that the two states establish a unified visa regime.

In the realm of church governance, the new Patriarch of the Belarusian Orthodox Church has recently formally requested that the Russian Orthodox Church grant the Belarusian Church greater autonomy in decision-making – it now has very little, being considered an “exarchate” of the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin is certain to view the request, correctly, as being not so much motivated by theological as by political concerns and a desire on the part of Lukashenko to reduce Moscow’s influence within Belarus.

Lukashenko’s hosting of multilateral talks aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement of the crisis in Ukraine has helped both to emphasize his continued usefulness to Putin, as well as to make Minsk useful to the West and to help bring Belarus out of its self-imposed isolation. The visit of three EU commissioners in relation to the talks broke the de facto boycott of high level EU officials’ visits to Belarus, in place since Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissidents following his 2010 election.

Minsk has strongly engaged its Baltic neighbors, all members of NATO, who share, together with Belarus, sizable Russian minorities as well as a palpable concern about Putin’s intentions towards them. In addition to the Baltics, Lukashenko has used the Ukraine crisis to draw closer to neighboring Poland and much of Central Europe, using warming relations with Central Europe as another means to more actively engage the EU. He has also sought to engage the United States, which remains untrusted but the support of which Minsk views as necessary for the success of its policy of warming relations with Brussels. Poland has been willing to allow relations with Belarus to warm as it sees Minsk as an important source of information on Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine and appreciates the balanced position which Minsk has taken in relation to the ongoing crisis. With the EU, Belarus has begun a series of conversations with Brussels on modernization. While the talks thus far have been modest in scope and Lukashenko seems intent on focusing on economic development and trade issues and ignoring the issues of human rights and democratic reform, they are an important start. For its part, Washington has sent three official delegations to Belarus in the past year, including one in September which consisted of high level State Department, USAID, and Pentagon officials. As with the EU, the warming of ties between Belarus and the US are thus far very modest, but the important issue is the trend in this direction.