Ruthenia

The headlines of stories about the US Congress like the one above are among the few opportunities for the words “Belarus” and “democracy” to stand next to each other. Last week, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee approved yet another piece of legislation on Belarus — “The Belarus Democracy and Human Rights Act of 2011” sponsored by Representative...

For many years a persona non-grata in Europe, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka hosted Guido Westerwelle of Germany and Radek Sikorski of Poland in Minsk last week.

For many years a persona non-grata in Europe, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka hosted Guido Westerwelle of Germany and Radek Sikorski of Poland in Minsk last week.

The foreign ministers came to...

The integration with the European Union is an increasingly articulated priority of Russia’s foreign policy in recent months. Analysts close to the Kremlin frequently stress the complementarity of the economies of Russia and the EU. The draft foreign policy programme published some time ago by by Russian Newsweek speaks in the same spirit. The fact that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev...

Amid tense waiting for presidential elections in Belarus and possible Russian attempts to influence the situation, 20 October, the President Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania visited...

New York Review of books published a book review of Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor of history. He reviewed Paranoia, a book of Belarusian writer Victor...

It is hardly a secret that establishing diplomatic relations with an authoritarian state is a gamble. One never knows what one’s embassy in Minsk may suffer if it crosses swords with the Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

On the night of August 30, two Molotov cocktails were thrown into the compound of the Russian Embassy in Minsk. Three days later, an obscure anarchist...