Why Belarus is called Europe’s last dictatorship

THE DECISION by Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, to force a passenger flight from Greece to Lithuania to land in Minsk, his country’s capital, in order to arrest a journalist on board was shocking. But perhaps not as much as it would have been had any other European ruler tried it. Mr Lukashenko’s eagerness to use repression against his people and his unwillingness to give up power have already earned him a reputation as Europe’s last dictator. Last year he stole an election and cracked down on the huge protests that followed. How has he ruled Belarus for the past 26 years?

Mr Lukashenko was elected as Belarus’s president in 1994, three years after the country declared independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unlike the leaders of other former Soviet states, he preserved the relics of communism. The anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 is still a national holiday, and state-owned factories remain under his control. The advance of democracy and of free markets has been sluggish. The president has hewed close to Russia: Belarus’s powerful neighbour supplies it with cheap gas and subsidised crude oil, which it refines and sells at a profit. In 1999 the two countries formed a “union state” to increase their economic integration. Though Mr Lukashenko has been wary of ceding independence, Russia’s support has helped maintain a decent standard of living in his country—better than in many other former Soviet states—which for many years mollified the public.

That all changed in August 2020, when Mr Lukashenko declared victory in a presidential election to secure his sixth term in office. The vote is widely believed to have been rigged. Several opposition candidates were banned from running, including Sergei Tikhanovsky, a former businessman and vlogger, who remains in jail. His wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, stood in his place: she was probably the legitimate winner. But Mr Lukashenko claimed that he won 80% of the vote. When hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest, the police responded with violence. By December 30,000 people had been detained, and more than 4,000 claimed to have been tortured, according to Nash Dom, a Belarusian NGO. Demonstrators were humiliated on state television and in some cases forced to recant their claims about the election or subsequent state brutality. Ms Tikhanovskaya went into exile in Lithuania. At least four people have died. Protests continue, although the number of people attending has dwindled. In recent months the president has targeted Belarusian journalists: last week 11 employees of Tut.by, an independent news site, were detained.

The response of European leaders to Mr Lukashenko’s despotism has so far been limp. Some of them, including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, met Ms Tikhanovskaya. The EU has placed sanctions—asset freezes and travel bans—on 88 Belarusians, including Mr Lukashenko. America has its own sanction list, albeit shorter. There will be more repercussions in the wake of the hijacking of a passenger plane. On May 24th the EU banned Belarusian planes from its skies, and told European flights not to enter Belarusian airspace. It has promised fresh economic sanctions too. But Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has backed Mr Lukashenko. With Russian support for Belarus intact, and the rest of Europe already giving him the cold shoulder, additional sanctions may do little to loosen Mr Lukashenko’s grip on power.

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