By Brian Whitmore
Vladimir Putin will travel next week to one of the only countries in Europe where he is still welcome in order to meet with one of his few remaining international allies.
Russian media reported that Putin will visit the western Belarusian city of Hrodna on June 30 to attend the Union State Regions Forum with Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Both the symbolism and timing of the trip are significant and revealing.
First the symbolism. Putin’s trip to Belarus will be his first in three years. In contrast, Lukashenka has made numerous trips to Russia, visiting Sochi, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and even a cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, in order to show his fealty to the Kremlin leader. This asymmetry reflects the true balance of power within the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats.
The fact that Putin will now travel to a provincial Belarusian city to meet Lukashenka does not necessarily suggest a change in power dynamics between the two dictators. But it does indicate that with his troops bogged down in Ukraine’s Donbas region, his international isolation increasing, and his conflict with the West intensifying, Putin needs Lukashenka more than he would probably care to admit.