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Belarus - Democracy Blooming? (1 Viewer)

Well, you made a long journey from Milan to Minsk, Rochelle, Rochelle. You never stopped hoping; now you're in a Pinsk, Rochelle, Rochelle. When the naysayers 'nay' you picked up your pace. You said nothing's going to stop me so get out of my face. I'm having adventures all over the place, Rochelle, ROCHELLE!

 
Unspeakable acts of cruelty by the government have been emerging. A man was shot point blank in the street, screams of torture heard from outside state prisons, pictures of men and women beaten black and blue all over. I haven't been posting them just because of the graphicness. But it's happening and Belorussians know it's happening. One of the downfalls of the Iron Curtain was the utter unwillingness of security forces to continue engaging in the repression tactics on a personal level to keep the regimes in place. And for what? For whom?

 
Putin and Belarus: Five Reasons Not to Save Lukashenko

3. Popular mobilization in Belarus is already far advanced. Nipping demonstrations in the bud is no longer an option. Lukashenko tried a crackdown, and it only spurred more demonstrations. For his part, Putin has spent his summer tolerating ongoing protests in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, sparked by the arrest of the elected regional governor. Putin clearly hoped those demonstrations would eventually go away. When they did not, he realized he would have to tolerate them—and try something else.

4. “Little green men” cannot solve Putin’s problem. The head of the government media outlet RT, Margarita Simonyan, made news last week when she called for “polite people” (Putin’s smirking term for the irregular Russian troops who seized Crimea, also known as “little green men”) to get involved. But it is extremely unlikely that Russian military, intelligence, or police are telling the Kremlin that pacifying the Belarusians will be a low-cost operation. At this point, they are probably not even sure their Belarusian counterparts would stand with them. If not, intervention would be a nightmare.
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- Given the size of the crowds, it may be too late for Putin's games. The only thing worse than Lukashenko being driven out is the Russians themselves being driven out.

 
Belarus’s Fight for Freedom

With the Belarusian protests, the lack of an obvious demand to change the country’s geopolitical orientation makes it less comprehensible and less interesting for Western politicians and journalists. Even if the West had more interest in the Belarusian revolution, it would be hard for it to formulate a suitable proposal for the country. This isn’t a case of a pro-Russian regime oppressing a pro-Western population and stopping it from following the geopolitical path it would like to.

...

Belarus might fit in with Europe on a multitude of economic, social, and cultural factors, but it would certainly not fit in on some of those same criteria: the same ones that stopped Russia from joining the Western world in the 1990s. 

A change of regime in dictatorial Belarus remains largely its own internal affair, rather than a foreign policy operation and act of geopolitical rivalry. For this reason, the impending collapse of the Belarusian regime and whatever comes next reveal a lot more than events in Ukraine did about possible political transformation in Russia, where the end of Putin’s personalistic regime due to public feeling can’t be passed off as a simple change of geopolitical direction either. 
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- Belarus is not the same as other Iron Curtain states or Ukraine, for the west or Russia.

 
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In a normal timeline, the US President would be working diplomaticly or otherwise to assist here. But our foreign policy of turtling up won’t allow for anything like that. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if our own intelligence apparatus is blind to what’s happening over there. And don’t get me started on the likelihood Putin not allowing the US to address this anyway. He holds Trumps leash and muzzle.

 
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BREAKING Belarusian authorities have searched passengers of Lufthansa #LH1487 before it was allowed to take off

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Seems like folks don't really care about this story. But I think its a pretty big deal. The CEO of RyanAir called it state sponsored piracy. That's an accurate description. 

 
whoknew said:
BREAKING Belarusian authorities have searched passengers of Lufthansa #LH1487 before it was allowed to take off

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Seems like folks don't really care about this story. But I think its a pretty big deal. The CEO of RyanAir called it state sponsored piracy. That's an accurate description. 
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Heard this on the radio this morning and my jaw dropped.  The guy pulled off the plane in midair I guess is subject to execution.   All attempts to reason with the leader of Belarus is falling on deaf ears.

 
supermike80 said:
Heard this on the radio this morning and my jaw dropped.  The guy pulled off the plane in midair I guess is subject to execution.   All attempts to reason with the leader of Belarus is falling on deaf ears.
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This needs to be met with the strongest of condemnations from the International community.  Enough so that it will never happen again.  The two people taken off the plane need to be returned.

 
This is pretty shocking and scary. Clearly this is unacceptable and should warrant a harsh response.

However, the Russian foreign ministry is comparing it to this situation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/04/forcing-down-morales-plane-air-piracy. Seems like a fairly similar situation, possibly even worse considering it was the plane of a head of state in that instance.  Does this hurt the credibility of the US in dealing with this situation?

Edit: I guess the reason I bring it up is because I had forgotten about that incident and when reminded, I remember being pretty indifferent to it. Maybe I should have been just as outraged then as I am now.

 
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Terrible.

This story needs a lot of attention. What in reality can be done, who knows. Without international attention, nothing.

 
The European Union on Monday called on all E.U.- based airlines to stop flying over Belarus and began the process of banning Belarusian airlines from flying over the bloc’s airspace or landing in its airports — effectively severing the country’s air connections to Western Europe.

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Good start.

 
Was listening to the Lawfare podcast about this this morning and they asked a good question - What do we do about this? 

As I wrote above, we can cut off Belarus's airspace. But in reality - who cares? Really this is a Russia problem. So how do we punish Belarus so that other rogue/Russian controlled states don't do this while also dealing with the Russia problem?

I don't know the answer to that.

 
killface said:
I have grave concerns about where a lot of this world appears to be going.  
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This whole situation is coming back to bite the world.  Would have been nice not to let Putin keep another face card in his hand.  This whole near miss of democracy in Belarus may have been a partial motivator for this current aggression in Ukraine.

 
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