II. Who Is Alexander Lukashenko Really?

The Potash Export Conspiracy, The Failed Wagner Coup in Minsk, Tucker Carlson and the Legacy of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania.

We’re going to skip ahead in our investigation to the very end, to make things more fun and to spice things up. Last time we spoke about Luka’s early ambitions and how he was elevated to power by the KGB, Gorbachev’s government, his close friendship with Yeltsin and the poisonous ideology that he has embraced for his fledgeling statelet to sew the seeds of anti-Russian sentiment in Belarussians for generations to come.

We also covered Luka’s patented “sitting on two stools” strategy whereby he tries to play the West against Moscow and how he almost got toppled because of it. You probably know about the Western-funded mass protests against his re-election in 2020, which then led to a mass exodus of mostly young Belarussians who fled the mass arrests by his KGB once it was clear that he wouldn’t be toppled.

Related to that, the NYT reported just this week that Luka was in secret negotiations with Washington again. He probably panicked once he read my tell-all article about him no doubt! Jokes aside, here is the article:

The senior American diplomat slipped quietly into Belarus, a police state run by a strongman reviled for decades in the West, traveling by car across the border for meetings with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and the head of his KGB security apparatus.

It was Mr. Lukashenko’s first meeting with a senior State Department official in five years, and the start of what could be a highly consequential thawing of frozen relations between the United States and Russia’s closest ally.

The below-the-radar American visit to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, on Wednesday came just a day after President Trump had a long telephone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Both events signaled Washington’s departure from a years long policy of trying to isolate leaders out of favor in the West because of their repressive policies and the war in Ukraine.

After talks with Mr. Lukashenko, Christopher W. Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and two other American officials drove to a village near the border with Lithuania. There, courtesy of the Belarusian KGB, three people who had been jailed — an American and two Belarusian political prisoners — were waiting to be picked up.

As darkness fell, the Americans and the freed prisoners drove back across the border to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Speaking outside the U.S. Embassy there on Wednesday evening, Mr. Smith hailed the successful completion of what he called “a special operation,” describing the prisoners’ release as a “huge win and a response to President Trump’s peace through strength agenda.”.

The next step, Mr. Smith told a gathering of Western diplomats on Thursday in Vilnius, according to people who attended, is a possible grand bargain under which Mr. Lukashenko would release a slew of political prisoners, including prominent ones. In return, the United States would relax sanctions on Belarusian banks and exports of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, of which Belarus is a major producer.

The people who relayed Mr. Smith’s account of his talks in Minsk spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential meeting. Mr. Smith himself has not publicly disclosed whom he met with or what was discussed, and the State Department did not respond to questions about those details.

Belarus, which usually gloats over any sign that it is breaking out of its isolation, has also been mostly silent, though an anchor on state television, Igor Tur, introduced a note of mystery, suggesting that Mr. Smith was not the real leader of the American delegation and that a more senior official also took part.

Franak Viacorka, the chief of staff to the exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has long called for toughening of sanctions, said: “We are very grateful to President Trump that he managed to move things forward.” But, he added, sanctions should be eased only when “Lukashenko stops repression and new arrests” and “releases all political prisoners, including top figures.”

(…)

An American-led drive to isolate and bankrupt Mr. Lukashenko under the Biden administration produced a raft of Western penalties. The sanctions on potash cut an important economic lifeline for the Belarusian ruler but handed a windfall to Russia, another big producer, as global prices spiked. Some Belarusian potash continued to reach global markets via Russia, instead of by the previous, cheaper route through Lithuania.

(…)

How to deal with Mr. Lukashenko has vexed Western policymakers for decades. A master at maneuvering between East and West, and silencing his critics at home, he took power in 1994 and has won seven increasingly dubious elections in a row, most recently in January, when he claimed 87 percent of the vote, his biggest landslide yet.

(…)

Before a presidential election in 2020, relations with Russia became so tense that Belarus jailed a challenger it described as a stalking horse for Moscow, and later arrested 33 Russians it said were mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group who had infiltrated the country to disrupt voting.

But the pendulum swung hard the other way after Mr. Lukashenko claimed an implausible victory over Ms. Tikhanovskaya in that election, which Western governments denounced as rigged, and huge street protests broke out in Minsk and cities across the country.

We will get to all of that in a moment. The Americans admit that they’re planning to use Belarus as a battering ram against Russia.

Mr. Smith, according to diplomats who attended his briefing, said the primary U.S. goal was to secure freedom for more political prisoners. He said he had asked Mr. Lukashenko whether he was ready to scale back repression and was assured that he was. Another important aim, Mr. Smith told the diplomats, is to give Mr. Lukashenko some breathing room outside Russia’s orbit of influence.

Piotr Krawczyk, a former head of Poland’s foreign intelligence service who worked with the first Trump administration on loosening Russia’s grip on Belarus, said Belarus was “part of a wider American approach toward Russia.”

The United States is “confronting Russia in Ukraine, in Africa, in the oil and gas sector, and in several other strategic areas,” he said. “Negotiating with Belarus creates additional leverage for the U.S. to signal to Russia that they should be more attentive to American arguments.”

Mr. Shraibman, the exiled analyst, said a big question now was how the Kremlin would react to any rapprochement between Belarus and the West. Many Russian officials “would likely panic at the prospect,” he said, but “there is no quick or easy way for Belarus to distance itself from Russia given Moscow’s economic dominance over the country.”

He added that it was unlikely that President Trump “has any particular interest in, understanding of or a plan for Belarus.” Even so, he said, the “Trump factor certainly creates some momentum, as everyone, including Lukashenko, tries to impress the U.S. president and compete for his attention.”

All of this while we are being told that Trump has bent over backwards to Russia’s demands! If you still believe the lying headlines spread by either NAFO or ZAnon, you are never going to understand what is really happening behind the scenes.

I shared this article to highlight the key themes: Luka keeping Putin at arm’s length, Luka playing dangerous games via his KGB with the West, and the NATO plan to use Belarus as a kind of Ukraine against Russia in time.

The Wagner Special Military Operation in Minsk

Remember the time that Lukashenko publicly declared that the Kremlin had tried to overthrow him using Wagner? No? Chances are that you’re hearing about this for the first time. Luckily, you’ve got me to fill in some blanks for you.

Here is a timeline of what happened in that fateful 2020 year.