What is Putin’s gain in the migrant crisis in Belarus? | Migration news

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As thousands of migrants are stranded in sub-zero temperatures on the wooded border between Belarus and Poland, there is no doubt that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has deliberately stoked the crisis to enrage the European Union.

But what is the role of the Kremlin in the crisis?

And how independent is it in trying to defuse the crisis between Belarus, its oldest ally, and the EU, its biggest trading partner whose thirst for Russian oil and gas largely keeps the Kremlin afloat economically?

“Lukashenko does everything with the blessing of the Kremlin. He’s like a cornered rat and Moscow is his only protector, ”Piotr Lysevich, a Belarusian graphic designer who fled to neighboring Ukraine after last year’s opposition protests over the sixth presidential victory, told Al Jazeera by Lukashenko.

Economically, politically and even linguistically, Belarus resembles Russia’s weaker and smaller Siamese twin.

For decades, the Kremlin has protected Lukashenko from Western ostracism and supported its economy with multibillion loans and low-cost hydrocarbons.

Moscow has removed bureaucratic hurdles for hundreds of thousands of Belarusian migrant workers – and sent a team of its top television propagandists to “improve” coverage of last year’s protests that rocked the nation of 9.5 million of people for weeks after Lukashenko’s “victory” with an assumed 80 percent of the vote.

The West called the vote rigged, failed to recognize Lukashenko as Belarusian president and imposed tougher sanctions on his government, leaving it without a lifeline but the umbilical cord that binds it to Russia.

The refugee crisis certainly looks like Lukashenko’s revenge – and a well-calculated attempt to provoke Poland, the EU and the collective West.

“Lukashenko has created a classic casus belli,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at the German University of Bremen, told Al Jazeera.

By letting thousands of people, apparently mostly Kurds from Iraq and Syria, travel to Belarus as “tourists” and directing them to the Polish border, Lukashenko wants Warsaw to lose patience.

Poland has said it will hold emergency talks with NATO over the crisis, while the UK has sent a small group of troops to “provide technical support” at the border.

Lukashenko wants Poland “to respond with an intervention, at least within the framework of a humanitarian operation”, declared Mitrokhine.

But Belarus is not quite a sovereign nation. Unlike other ex-Soviet countries, it has created a “state of union” with Russia which is ultimately to have a common government, currency and army.

The deal was made in 1997, when Lukashenko hoped to replace the alcoholic and sick Russian president Boris Yeltsin. But after the election of ex-KGB colonel Vladimir Putin in 2000, Lukashenko continued to postpone the merger.

Last year’s protests, however, showed that he had little room for political haggling with Moscow.

“Thus, it is impossible to imagine that Belarus has provoked a military conflict with its neighbor without the support” of the Kremlin, concluded Mitrokhin.

Minsk and Moscow could defuse the refugee crisis after the EU and its most powerful member, Berlin, agree to lift sanctions from the Lukashenko administration – and certify Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline that will carry direct from Russian natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea. .

Other observers believe that Lukashenko will use the intervention as a pretext to declare martial law and let Russian troops enter Belarus as “peacekeepers”.

Instead of finalizing the “state of union” – and triggering fierce popular protests – Lukashenko wants to ensure his life in power, even as a virtual puppet of the Kremlin, as the sole guarantor of the Russian occupation .

“Lukashenko will remain a very important person for Putin, a virtually irreplaceable person – because the legitimacy of Russia’s military presence will only be guaranteed if the official head of state agrees,” Vitali Shkliarov told Al Jazeera .

Shkliarov worked on the campaigns of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders in the United States, promoted opposition politicians in Russia and was jailed and tortured in Belarus after working with an opposition candidate in the elections of the last year.

A direct confrontation between Moscow and Brussels will also pay Lukashenko’s bills.

“In this way, Russia will have to become the subject of a half-military conflict and a dependent partner forced to pay Lukashenko ‘credit’ after ‘credit’,” Shkliarov said.

Other analysts disagree – and say that a refugee crisis is a way for Lukashenko to overcome his almost absolute dependence on Moscow.

“I don’t think Lukashenko is under Putin’s thumb. On the contrary, Lukashenko is trying to escape his total dependence on the Kremlin while trying to manipulate both the Kremlin and Putin, ”Al Pavel Luzin, a Russia-based analyst for the Jamestown Foundation, told Al Pavel Luzin, a think tank in Washington, DC. Jazeera.

In exchange for de-escalation, Lukashenko wants Brussels to recognize his re-election and start political haggling.

“He needs the West to recognize his power, starts talking to him. So far he’s not doing well, but Lukashenko has nowhere to go – and he’s improvising, ”he said.

Meanwhile, Kremlin image specialists defend Lukashenko – and fan the flames of anti-Polish propaganda that dates back to centuries of Tsarism and Soviet Russian control over Poland.

“Poland refuses to cooperate with Belarus, refuses to respect the human rights of migrants,” pro-Kremlin analyst Sergey Markov told Belarus 1 television channel on Saturday.

“Poland has chosen the path of political war. Needless to say, this is the traditional choice of the Polish ruling class, the way it almost always chooses, ”he said.

Lukashenko, former chairman of a collective farm, was the first and only elected president of Belarus since 1994. He has preserved collective farms and state factories where farmers and workers receive meager but stable incomes.

His political opponents disappeared without a trace or fled the country, while small urban protests against each of his re-elections were dispersed with violence and arrests.

For decades, Moscow has supplied Belarus with discounted crude which was processed in two giant refineries and resold to Ukraine and the Eurasian Economic Union (UEE).

Even though a fifth of Belarusian territory was contaminated after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion in Ukraine, Russia has never questioned the quality of Belarusian milk and meat.



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