Alyaksandr Lukashenka has decided to make explicit what has long been implicit.
In little-noticed remarks during his rambling eight-hour press conference earlier this month, the Belarusian dictator said a clause in the country’s constitution stipulating that it must strive for neutrality should be removed when the basic law is redrafted.
“What kind of neutrality can we talk about? There are two options here: either we define our state as not neutral in the Constitution, or we do not write anything about it at all,” Lukashenka said, noting that Belarus was a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
Belarus’s constitutionally mandated neutrality has long been something of a chimera. In addition to being a member of the CSTO and EEU, Belarus is also part of a broad but ill-defined “union state” with Russia which, among other things, includes an integrated air defense system.
Although Belarus has long been a de facto Russian client state whose economy survived on subsidies from Moscow, the facade of neutrality previously gave Lukashenka a degree of flexibility in his relations with the Kremlin. It enabled him to make periodic overtures to the West in order to extort more largesse from Russia. It also provided a safety valve when Lukashenka feared Belarusian sovereignty was in danger, as was the case with his opening to the West following Russia’s armed intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
The rigged Belarusian presidential election in August 2020, the massive protests that followed it, and Lukashenka’s ensuing brutal crackdown on dissent have changed this game entirely. Lukashenka is now persona non grata in the West and has no choice but to go all in with Russia.