Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that there are no discussions underway about unifying Russia and Belarus. Peskov’s remarks in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty on March 30 were just the latest attempt by a senior Russian official to insist that we should all move along because there really is nothing to see here.
Earlier this month, Grigory Rapota, the outgoing Secretary of the Russian-Belarus Union State, said a formal merger of the two countries is a “far-fetched” idea that is not on the agenda. Along the same lines, Russia’s outgoing ambassador to Minsk, Dmitry Mezentsev, said Moscow has no intention of creating a single army with Belarus.
These denials are an indication that we should be increasingly vigilant about what Moscow is really up to in Belarus. And this is not only the case because it has become something of a running joke that we should never believe anything about Russia until the Kremlin denies it.
The statements by Peskov, Rapota, and Mezentsev are probably technically true. We are unlikely to witness a formal unification of Russia and its smaller western neighbor; nor will we see a full merger of their militaries. We won’t have to. The Kremlin’s strategy is much more subtle than that, and it is succeeding.