Jaycey
African Refugee
Belarus
With Moscow closing in is luck finally running out for Belarusian ‘dictator’ Alexander Lukashenko?
"Some 25 years ago, Alexander Lukashenko was elected as president in the first ever democratic elections in Belarus. He was 39. Since then, there have been no further such elections, only clampdowns, protests, tweaked constitutions, alleged assassinations and the founding of an authoritarian system described as the last dictatorship of Europe.
But over the years, the former collective farm director, now 65, has excelled as a wily tactician and survivor. Swinging from one seemingly existential crisis to the next, Mr Lukashenko has always found a way to emerge from negotiations unscathed and emboldened.
He has balanced between Russia and Europe; joined a “union” state but refused to host Russian military bases nor recognise Crimea; benefitted from massive oil and gas preferences amounting to tens of billions of pounds from Moscow but negotiated a separate trade partnership with China.
Read on … https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-alexander-lukashenko-president-a9256451.html
With all eyes on Brexit and convid-19 Belarus hasn’t made headlines in the West.
But in Ukraine its front page every day – is Putin going to intervene as he did in Ukraine after Maidan?
No black & white here - it’s complicated!

"Some 25 years ago, Alexander Lukashenko was elected as president in the first ever democratic elections in Belarus. He was 39. Since then, there have been no further such elections, only clampdowns, protests, tweaked constitutions, alleged assassinations and the founding of an authoritarian system described as the last dictatorship of Europe.
But over the years, the former collective farm director, now 65, has excelled as a wily tactician and survivor. Swinging from one seemingly existential crisis to the next, Mr Lukashenko has always found a way to emerge from negotiations unscathed and emboldened.
He has balanced between Russia and Europe; joined a “union” state but refused to host Russian military bases nor recognise Crimea; benefitted from massive oil and gas preferences amounting to tens of billions of pounds from Moscow but negotiated a separate trade partnership with China.
Read on … https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-alexander-lukashenko-president-a9256451.html
With all eyes on Brexit and convid-19 Belarus hasn’t made headlines in the West.
But in Ukraine its front page every day – is Putin going to intervene as he did in Ukraine after Maidan?
No black & white here - it’s complicated!