A brief look at the geography, geopolitical significance, and recent history of Belarus provides important background for understanding the challenges that Minsk is currently facing, and the ways in which both Moscow and Europe can influence the future of the country.

Geography and geopolitical significance

Belarus is located on the North European Plain that stretches from northern France to the Ural Mountains. The absence of significant mountain ranges and the scarcity of large rivers has historically posed few obstacles for people – and, by extension, armies – to move across this large plain. As the territory of Belarus has in addition bordered various great powers – first and foremost, various incarnations of the Russian state (Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation) – it has regularly been a militarily contested borderland of these surrounding states. From Russia’s perspective, the lack of geographical obstacles and its proximity to the Russian heartland made the territory of Belarus of key strategic importance. Indeed, the territory was a frequent battlefield and passageway for invading armies from the west, such as Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1812, the German imperial army from 1914 to 1918, and, most dramatically, the Nazi German Wehrmacht in World War II.

Following the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the geopolitical importance of the territory of Belarus, which under Soviet rule had become the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), was temporarily lowered, After all, Germany was defeated as a military great power, while Moscow gained unprecedented strategic depth by annexing various territories in Eastern Europe (including eastern Poland, which was absorbed into the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs). Moreover, the Soviet Union created a belt of satellite states in Eastern Europe all the way into central Germany. As such, after 1945 the Russian heartland was better protected than at any prior time in history.

However, following the domino-like fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union into its 15 constituent Union republics in 1991, Moscow lost its most important geopolitical gains of World War II, and more, while Belarus emerged – essentially for the first time in history – as an independent country.[6] The subsequent eastward enlargement of both NATO and the EU again heightened Belarus’ strategic significance to Russia as a buffer state that provides Moscow with at least a modicum of strategic depth,[7] as well as an important position from which – in the case of a war with NATO – Russia can support the nearby, isolated Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and, potentially, close off the “Suwałki Gap” between Poland and Lithuania to prevent NATO reinforcements from reaching the Baltic states. As such, the strategic value of Belarus has been ingrained in Russian strategic culture, shaped by both geography and history.[8]

Independence: Authoritarianism, Union State, and multi-vector foreign policy

The Byelorussian SSR became an independent Belarusian state in December 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and its 15 Union republics became newly independent countries. But while the Soviet state – through its (nominal) ethno-federalist structure – left Belarus with a developed state structure, repeated Soviet campaigns to promote the Belarusian language never succeeded in challenging the dominant position of the Russian language in the increasingly urbanised Byelorussian society.[9] And, unlike in Ukraine, the dominance of the Russian language has persisted in Belarus to this day.

When in 1994 a new constitution established a Belarusian presidency, Aliaksandr Lukashenka – a former collective farm chairman who reinvented himself as a politician – won the inaugural presidential election in a competitive political environment and without substantial fraud. Subsequently, however, Lukashenka managed to consolidate an effective, personalist authoritarian regime and his re-elections became marked by an increasingly skewed political playing field and intense election fraud. Given that politics in the absence of the rule of law and in the context of an unchecked presidency is a dangerous, zero-sum game, holding on to power became the primary objective of the Lukashenka regime,[10] and any (potentially) serious opposition figures were repressed. After all, Lukashenka – like other dictators – fears that if he loses power, his successor could use the unchecked executive power of the authoritarian state to expropriate, imprison, or, potentially, even assassinate the ex-president.

Meanwhile, Belarus’ enduring economic dependence on Russia drove Minsk to seek closer integration with Moscow. Over time, this was further incentivised by the fact that it was easier for Minsk to deal with the increasingly authoritarian Kremlin than with the European Union, which took it upon itself to call for the democratisation of the former communist countries in Eastern Europe. For Moscow, meanwhile, Minsk’s lingering dependence on Russia created opportunities to maintain its influence in a strategically important neighbouring country.

These factors (possibly alongside Lukashenka’s political ambitions inside the Russian Federation at the time) laid the foundation for the creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus in 1999. While the Union State envisioned a comprehensive political, economic, and military integration between the two post-Soviet countries, the implementation of agreements has been highly uneven at best.[11] Key to the relative failure of the Union State project are the large discrepancies in the objectives that Moscow and Minsk have been pursuing through it. While Moscow seeks to expand its political influence while keeping economic subsidies for Belarus to a minimum, Minsk has sought primarily to extract maximum economic benefits while preserving its sovereignty and strategic autonomy as much as possible.[12] After all, any transfer of power to the supranational level within the context of a partnership between two highly unequal states would inevitably result in a decrease in Belarusian sovereignty, and thereby threaten Lukashenka’s hold on political power.

Indeed, second only to his wish to preserve his personal power within the Belarusian political system, preserving Belarusian sovereignty and strategic autonomy internationally, primarily vis-à-vis the Russian Federation, has been Lukashenka’s other main political objective.[13] Concerns about Belarusian sovereignty became especially acute after Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, its 2014 “hybrid” war in Ukraine, and, most recently, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These military interventions by the Russian Federation raised the spectre that Moscow may one day use military force – or the threat thereof – to undermine or even undo Belarusian sovereignty as well.[14] In response to this looming threat, Lukashenka emphatically stated in October 2024 that any attempt by Russia to annex Belarus would lead to war between the two countries.[15]

In order to safeguard Belarusian sovereignty, increase Belarus’ strategic autonomy, and strengthen his bargaining position for gaining important concessions from Russia (like much-needed energy subsidies), Lukashenka has repeatedly pursued a multi-vector foreign policy aimed at decreasing Belarus’ dependence on Russia by developing ties to Europe in particular.[16]

By alternating cooperation with both Russia and Europe with resisting their pressures – for integration and democratisation respectively – Minsk aims to hedge against the risks and maximise the benefits of engagement with both regional powers.[17]

While this multi-vector foreign policy has repeatedly created more space and leverage for Belarus to manoeuvre geopolitically between its powerful neighbours, it has also caused tensions with both Russia and the EU. On the one hand, Moscow has often been frustrated by Minsk for not behaving as the pliant satellite or vassal state that Russia would like Belarus to be. On the other hand, Brussels and individual EU member states have repeatedly been disappointed that Minsk has resisted democratisation and ramped up repression. Substantial political liberalisation, however, would pose an existential threat to the Lukashenka regime, whose primary objective, as we have seen, is to maintain its hold on power. This has led to repeated cycles of rapprochement followed by disillusionment and the imposition of sanctions by the European side.

Lukashenka’s initial effort to seek rapprochement with the European Union was in 2007-8. To curry favour with Europe, his regime released political prisoners, and the EU, in turn, lifted sanctions in response. By 2009, the normalisation of relations had proceeded to such an extent that Belarus was even included in the EU’s Eastern Partnership. The rapprochement was abruptly ended by the EU, however, due to the violent repression of protests in the wake of the December 2010 presidential election in Belarus, in response to which the EU imposed sanctions on the Lukashenka regime.[18]

The next attempt at rapprochement came in the wake of the “Ukraine crisis” of 2014. Lukashenka sought to improve relations with the EU by releasing political prisoners and positioning Minsk as a neutral venue for the negotiations of what would become the Minsk Agreements (2014-2015), while at the same time refusing to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Minsk thus made Belarus’ neutrality in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine into a key pillar of its hedging strategy. In response, the EU lifted most of its sanctions on Belarus and increased its financial assistance to Minsk.[19]

In addition to the pursuit of a multi-vector foreign policy, Russia’s wars against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014-2015 also led Lukashenka to pursue a policy of so-called “soft Belarusisation” in which the Belarusian authorities made some minor – largely symbolic – gestures (such as promoting the Belarusian language and celebrating anniversaries of specifically Belarusian historical events) to boost a Belarusian national identity separate from that of Russia. However, Russian hostility and – probably more importantly – the fact that a more Western-oriented Belarusian national identity distinct from Russia had long been associated with the political opposition to Lukashenka made the Belarusian President hesitant in pursuing this policy, before he abandoned it in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections.[20]

The current crisis: The 2020 protests and Russia’s war in Ukraine

Two crises – one internal, a second one external – have in recent years profoundly uprooted the Lukashenka regime’s balancing acts between Russia and the EU and between regime survival and the preservation of Belarusian sovereignty. The first crisis – the internal one – consisted of large-scale anti-regime protests that unexpectedly broke out in August 2020, following another fraudulent presidential election that Lukashenka claimed to have won. The anti-Lukashenka opposition and sympathising protesters rallied around Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the wife of a jailed dissident vlogger, who suddenly emerged as the most serious challenger to the long-sitting Belarusian President to emerge over the course of Lukashenka’s three-decade-long rule.

Similar to how Moscow and Beijing have regarded previous “colour revolutions” in post-Soviet Eurasia, Lukashenka saw the protests as a Western plot to overthrow him.[21] Faced with this unprecedented threat to his rule, Lukashenka was willing to sacrifice his second political objective of strengthening Belarus’ autonomy to safeguard his priority objective of staying in power by accepting Russian support in exchange for deeper integration with the Russian Federation. Moscow provided important financial support to cushion the economic blow from the widespread strikes, as well as direct security assistance in the form of security advisers and personnel and equipment from the Russian Federal Security Service (Federal’naia sluzhba bezopasnosti, FSB). Russian television crews were even brought in to staff an empty studio in Minsk after employees had walked out in protest. Russian support may have been decisive for the survival of the Lukashenka regime in 2020.[22] As the regime successfully repressed the protest movement, Tsikhanouskaya and other opposition leaders fled abroad. In September 2022, Tsikhanouskaya created a United Transitional Cabinet – an interim government in exile – in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

In response to his large-scale repressions of the protests, the EU refused to recognise the outcome of the 2020 election, substantially downgraded diplomatic relations with Belarus, and imposed a series of sanction packages on the Lukashenka regime and the Belarusian economy. These sanctions intensified after Minsk used a fake bomb threat to ground a Ryanair flight on its way from Athens to Vilnius to arrest opposition activist Raman Pratasevich in May 2021. The Lukashenka regime, in turn, suspended Belarus’ membership of the Eastern Partnership.[23] All this significantly increased Minsk’s dependence on Moscow. To begin with, Belarus redirected more of its trade towards Russia and agreed to further harmonise relevant legal systems with Russia’s. Lukashenka also recognised Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and allowed Moscow to station Russian fighter aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems on Belarusian territory. Moreover, a constitutional referendum orchestrated by Lukashenka in February 2022 removed Belarus’ non-nuclear status from the Constitution, opening the door for the stationing of Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.[24] The Lukashenka regime’s much-prized multi-vector foreign policy had seemingly come to an end.

The second crisis faced by the Lukashenka regime was external, namely Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although Belarusian armed forces have so far not become directly engaged in the fighting, a part of Russia’s invasion force entered Ukraine from Belarusian territory. Whereas Belarus was quite successful in positioning itself as a neutral partner to the warring parties in 2014-2015, now there was no such option as Minsk was seen by the West as Moscow’s accomplice in the war. Some analysts have argued that there was a causal link between Minsk’s increased dependence on Moscow after 2020 and the fact that Belarus became a staging ground for the Russian invasion,[25] although the counterfactual situation that Lukashenka would not have allowed Vladimir Putin to use Belarus as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine if Belarus had not been under substantial Western sanctions cannot be proven and remains difficult to assess.

What is undisputable, however, is that Lukashenka’s complicity in the war led the EU to further expand its growing sanctions regime against Belarus, to the point where export restrictions against Russia and Belarus became essentially equalised by August 2023.[26] Meanwhile, Moscow managed to further strengthen its grip on Belarus, even to the point of allegedly stationing Russian tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil (although no proof of the presence of such weapons in Belarus has come to light). Moreover, in November 2024 Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine explicitly placed Belarus under Moscow’s nuclear umbrella.[27] At the same time, however, Lukashenka has remained ardent that he will not send Belarusian soldiers to fight alongside Russia against Ukraine.