«Elections» in Belarus. Drama replaces farce

Turns out you only used those eyes.  Simply to sell me all those lies

In October this year Polish and German Foreign Affairs Ministers Radosław Sikorski and Guido Westerwelle visited Minsk. They’ve tried to persuade Lukashenko to hold fair elections, having offered him €3 billion instead. The last European dictator has slyly used the visit of two EU ministers in order to demonstrate the voters that he’d be able to make a deal with the West. Simultaneously with that he “stung” Russia, so that Kremlin wouldn’t think that he’s way too interested in the solid relationship with the Eastern Brother. Things that happened on the 19^th of December seemingly crushed illusions of everyone who attempted to make a deal with Batka[1] — it turned out that not everything in Byelorussia can be bought even for €3 billion. 

            I wouldn’t comment on the elections in Belarus — world media is full of reports from Minsk and commentaries regarding this painful matter. Now, when drama replaced farce, it’d much more interesting to look into the future and try to understand how the West is going to deal with the „new”  Byelorussian President. Beyond the shadow of doubt, preparations for such deals are already under way. Besides two naive European ministers, an entire and quite imposing delegation from Washington also visited the Byelorussian capital. During three days since 12^th to 15^th of December, experts of influential American think tanks were on a visit to Minsk: CSIS (Centre of Strategic and International Studies) currently headed by John J. Hamre, Pentagon ex-chief, Congressional Research Service which has 700 employees and an annual budget of $100 million, Carnegie Endowment, The Heritage Foundation,  Nuclear Threat Initiative,  Institute for New Democracies (IND) that don’t need to be introduced. U.S. embassy in Moscow officially stated that American government has nothing to do with that. During this visit — completely unknown to Washington — American experts met with the leadership of Foreign and Interior Affairs Ministries, Ministry of Defense, deputies of Byelorussian parliament and even the President of independent Belarus himself. Americans didn’t have any contacts with the opposition. So why did Americans visit Minsk three days before the elections? I have no idea. There was no information in the media regarding that matter.

            However, famous insidious cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu from Alexandre Dumas’ „Three Musketeers” used to repeat: „Logic is the best spy”. And it is logic that tells us that this visit was not accidental.

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[1] Lukashenko’s nickname in Byelorussia. National equivalent for “daddy”.