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.
Belarus and Ukraine are celebrating the 19th year of their independence in 2010. Kiev decided to schedule the fireworks for August 24. On this day in 1991, spurred...
Damon Wilson and David Kramer recently gave they account of how the United States pressure resulted in Belarus regime’s release of political prisoners. David Kramer was the key figure...
It is hard to say who will become Belarusian president after Lukashenka, but it is easy to predict what kind of political system will be left in Belarus. Although there...
Recent Russia-Belarus information conflict is still attracting attention of leading international media outlets. The latest dispute broke out in June when Russia and Belarus tussled over natural gas prices, and...
David Marples, professor at the University of Alberta, Canada and a President of the North American Association for Belarusian Studies is on the research trip to Minsk right now. In the article for the Jamestown Foundation * he...
Andrej Sannikau, a potential candidate in 2011 Belarus presidential elections appeared on Hard Talk, the BBC World flagship current affairs interview programme. Stephen Sackur, BBC journalist who interviewed Mr Sannikau has made a few “hard” points, in particular to...
The Economist reports on the media war broken out between Belarus and Russia. One good thing about what is going on is that for the first time the public in Belarus...
Opposition leaders were unable to adopt a procedure for selecting a single presidential contender at their meeting in Minsk at the beginning of July, BelaPAN reported*. According to Uladzimir...
After June’s gas dispute and Russian enforcing Belarus to join the Customs Union, political tension between Minsk and Moscow persists, taking ever new turns and twists. Belarusian leadership retaliated for the film about Lukashenka shown on Gazprom-controlled NTV by...
Russian major television channel NTV featured a movie “The God Father”. The movie depicts the story of mysterious disappearances of major politicians in 1990s and other human rights violations committed in Belarus recently. The documentary also emphasizes that...
This week, after a bitter gas transit conflict with Belarusian government, Russian Gasprom declared that preliminary gas prices for Belarus next year should be about USD 250. Now it pays 185 dollars. Even some naïve oppositional analysts welcomed what...
Belarus’ voice is seldom heard on the international scene, and its concerns are rarely taken into account. Minsk has not succeeded in achieving its major foreign policy goals and...
It seems that pragmatism and realpolitik are winning at the moment over values-driven approaches in EU policy toward Belarus, while Lukashenka’s power game continues eroding the EU’s self-esteem.
