Alexander Lukashenko

Belarus, a small post-Soviet state once hardly distinguishable from Russia and chronically misspelled in the Western press, has been making more and more headlines lately. And if the Russian-Belarusian military exercises with deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 air defense system weren’t enough, the 2010 Russian-Belarusian oil row is bound to make the West anxious. Moscow...

Russia continues to cut subsidies to Belarus economy. This time, it has reached the lucrative oil refining business, which had already been hit by the...

Business interests and personal sympathy to Alexander Lukashenka have been called by Belarusian analysts the reason for Berlusconi's friendliness and itself the fact of his short visit to Belarus.

Anyway, it was truly a historical event that passed...

Appeasement in our time -- Berlusconi goes to Belarus
by Joerg Forbrig

BERLIN -- This year has been full of celebrations of the peaceful revolutions of 1989, arguably the most important advance of freedom, democracy, and human rights in history. But this year has also seen rapid European rapprochement with (and some might say appeasement of) one of the world’s...

The Financial Times have this week published several stories on Belarus by its Eastern European corespondent Jan Cienski. Both of them seem rather to be stating the obvious but are very useful to get a snapshot impression of the current state of Belarusian economy and foreign policy. The coutry feeling symptoms of the economic crisis and, being unable to get Russian sponsorship any more,...

6:30 p.m., November 23, Monday
Rayburn House Office Building, U.S. Congress
Independence Ave. and South Capitol Street, Washington, DC 20003

The Third Way Belarus and Belarusan Museum in New...

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe invite you to a briefing with top Belarusian pro-democracy leaders

15 Years and Counting: Inside Lukashenka's Belarus...

Excerpts on Belarus from the US Helsinki Commission hearing held on October 28, 2009 in Washington, D.C.:

Present: Philip H. Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian...

On Sept. 17, to Russia’s satisfaction and to Poland’s chagrin, President Obama announced canceling US plans to build a missile base in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. The revelation came on the 70th...

The Soviet past taught Minsk that guns and oil are the most powerful instruments for shaping the international politics. Arms transfers to client governments allowed the Soviet Union to recruit allies and expand its strategic influence. Belarusian heavy industry constituted 25 percent of Soviet machine production, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, Minsk started exporting arms independently...