On Sunday, Minsk and Moscow will celebrate a day of unity, commemorating the moment when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and then Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a treaty in 1996 aimed at the formation of a Union state of the two Slavic neighbors.
Some proposals, such as a shared currency, never got off the ground, but the Union state became the basis for gradually deepening cooperation.
While Belarus also seemed interested in relations with the West, that changed in 2020, when Moscow came to the rescue of Lukashenko.
The mustachioed leader had faced massive anti-government street protests. Russia said it was ready to send troops to support the crackdown on dissent. In the end, no Russian troops were involved, but the offer helped suppress the revolt somewhat.
While Russia has ravaged Ukraine over the past year, Belarus has loyally sided with Russia and recently agreed to host Russian tactical nuclear weapons — a sign of stronger ties.
Hemmed in and sandwiched between Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland, Belarus became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Three years later, Alexander Lukashenko, a once radical and reformist Soviet deputy, came to power.
His tenure has arguably been a return to the Soviet past, with Belarus maintaining a largely state-run, centralized economy and tightly controlled society.
Lukashenko, long nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator”, has led the country continuously for nearly 30 years.
For much of his tenure, he has sought to maintain sovereignty and, by extension, his own power. But in recent years, and especially since the war in Ukraine, he has grown closer to Russia.
“Lukashenko has built his regime through fear and repression against dissenters, gradually depriving citizens of freedom of expression and the right to express their political opinions,” Belarusian researcher Alesia Rudnik told Al Jazeera.
“However, the biggest wave of repression started after the large-scale protests in 2020.”
Mass protests against Lukashenko
Mass protests broke out three years ago after Lukashenko declared himself the winner of the election, winning more than 80 percent of the vote – a majority the opposition said was unlikely.
There were widespread reports of torture as security forces suppressed the demonstrations.
However, the 68-year-old has not always been face to face with Moscow, and during the protests he even accused Russia of sending mercenaries to overthrow him.
But spurned by Europe over allegations of human rights violations and encouraged by the moral support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko moved closer to the Kremlin.
“Prior to the 2020 protests, Lukashenko and his regime tried to maintain a balance between Russia and the West,” Rudnik continued. “The western window is completely closed for now and the attitude towards Russia has shifted towards looking at the [Russian] regime as guarantor of Lukashenko’s stability.”
While Minsk’s foreign policy generally follows Moscow’s lead, Lukashenko had also tried to keep his options open with the West.
He had invited Western observers to military exercises with Russia and introduced visa-free travel for Western citizens.
In 2019, he even looked at closer ties with NATO.
But in 2021, after the protests, he resolutely joined the Kremlin in claiming that Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was Russia’s territory.
“Lukashenko has signed an agreement with Russian President Boris Yeltsin to establish a political and economic union between the two countries,” Tatsiana Kulakevich, a Belarusian academic at the University of South Florida, told Al Jazeera .
“The agreement was never fully implemented. However, Belarus’ integration with Russia has deepened significantly since 2020, when Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged assistance in cracking down on large-scale election protests in Belarus. Lukashenko’s acceptance of Russian aid, as well as constant lobbying by the Belarusian diaspora and [opposition leader] Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya for the West’s support against Lukashenko marked a turning point in his efforts to strike a balance between East and West.”
Evolution of a union state
The Union State project, even if not fully realized, had a few advantages.
In 2014, a customs union meant that Belarusian smugglers could help Russia evade Western sanctions by importing goods such as Italian cheese and shipping it to Russia without any controls as “Belarusian Parmesan”.
After the protests against Lukashenko, the state process of the Union gained momentum.
The main thing was military cooperation. In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, tens of thousands of Russian troops were sent to Belarus under the guise of “training exercises.”
Like NATO, Russia’s official military doctrine since 2010 considers an attack on one member of the Union state as an attack on both, and pledges to respond accordingly.
Although Minsk did not take an active part in the invasion, it was a staging post for the war and there have been reports of Russian missiles fired from Belarusian territory and wounded soldiers being treated in Belarusian hospitals.
In response, Belarus has been hit by sanctions, cutting it off from the European economy.
Still, Lukashenko has said that Belarusian soldiers will not join the battle.
“Belarus cannot do without the troops,” Kulakevich said. “A majority of the troops serving in the Belarusian army are conscripts doing compulsory military service.
“In addition, any Belarusian troops sent to Ukraine would rely on the Russian command infrastructure [and] losing control is not in Lukashenko’s interest.”
A small cadre of highly trained special forces troops is unlikely to be deployed to Ukraine, Kulakevich added, as Lukashenko needs them to quell domestic unrest.
Still, there are other ways Belarus can prove to be a useful ally of Russia.
In February, after a referendum widely suspected of being rigged, Belarus announced it would scrap its commitment to remain nuclear-free, paving the way for the stationing of Russian nuclear weapons.
This month, Putin announced he would station nuclear warheads in Belarus in response to the United Kingdom sending depleted uranium shells to Ukraine.
“Of course Russia has a huge influence on the Belarusian authorities and society,” said Danila Lavretski, general secretary of the opposition movement Youth Bloc Belarus.
“Political integration within the framework of the so-called ‘Union State’ directly contradicts the Belarusian Constitution and, together with [other] factors may lead to a situation where the independence of Belarus will remain in name only.”
In his view, Belarus lacks the kind of nationalism that has defined much of Ukraine’s recent history.
But in recent years, the demand for “Belarusian nationalism” has grown in society, he told Al Jazeera.
“Lukashenko’s regime not only systematically destroyed democratic institutions, but also contributed to the decay of Belarusian self-identity. Since 1994, the number of Belarusian language schools has declined, the Russian language has been adopted as the second state language, and the previous state symbol, the white-red flag, was replaced by the Soviet flag and instead became a symbol of the opposition.”
As in Russia, a number of Belarusians also protested against the war in Ukraine. There were 800 arrests on the night of February 27 last year, during rallies in solidarity with Ukraine.
“For the Belarusian opposition, the beginning of the war became an opportunity to mobilize both their supporters and ‘faltering’ citizens,” said Lavretski. “There is a consensus in Belarusian society that rejects the war as a phenomenon in general, and even more so a war with the participation of the Belarusian people.”
While most Belarusians still tend to think positively about Russia, society has become more polarized; many view Lukashenko as little more than Putin’s puppet.
“After 2020, Lukashenko turned to his own people, shot himself in the foot and no longer has any influence over Putin, as he remains his only close and strong political ally,” Rudnik said.