Abbas Gallyamov: "Lukashenko may not return from Moscow to Minsk..."

It is known from world history that there are many and most varied ways to lose power and take it. Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov considered one of the possible options that may well turn out in Belarus:

“This week Lukashenko is going to Moscow. On the eve of the visit, it would make sense for him to familiarize himself with the sad story of British Labor leader Corbyn, who lost the election two years ago and was forced to resign. He owed the end of his political career to Moscow, namely, his unsuccessful reaction to the Skripal poisoning scandal.

In general, British public opinion has long suspected that Corbin was a freak; among other things, this was facilitated by his, to put it mildly, atypical foreign policy preferences - the Labor leader loved to support the Iranian Ayatollahs, Hamas, Hezbollah and other "fighters against world imperialism." For the time being, however, this did not bother him much - in the conditions of growing anti-establishment sentiments, all this exoticism was perceived primarily as proof that he was "not like all other politicians" and the advantages of such a perception outweighed the disadvantages.

The straw that broke the back of the camel was the story of the Skripals. True to his strategy of always going against the mainstream, Corbyn took a pose similar to the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry: "You prove it!" And this despite the fact that 73 percent of British voters were convinced of Russia's guilt, and only 5 percent did not agree with them. Corbyn was especially impressed when, at a debate in parliament, he said that before deciding whether Russia was to blame, she needed to hand over a sample of Novichok so that she could conduct a check and officially declare whether this poison was Russian or not. When he said this, his own party members raised such a cry in the hall that the speaker had to deliberately calm them down. By the time the Skripals case was on the agenda, the rating of the Laborites was higher than the rating of the Conservatives. Immediately after the scandal, he went down and again did not rise to the surface.

The reputation of the Russian regime in the world is such that it is costly for politicians to get closer to it. Lukashenko's trip to Putin will obviously be interpreted in Minsk as “surrender of sovereignty in exchange for support”. This move will outrage not only the opposition. I think the state apparatus will not like it either - first of all the security officials. For those, the words “patriotism” and “sovereignty” are not an empty phrase, and if earlier these concepts played on Lukashenko, now they can turn against him.

In place of the Belarusian opposition, I would make a corresponding appeal to the security officials. Say, whom do you support? A person who trades in the country's sovereignty?!

In Corbyn's case, Labor was able to make it appear as though his own ideological biases were more important than the safety of citizens; in the case of Lukashenko, everything looks about the same, only the place of ideological biases is taken by his irrepressible thirst for power.

It is quite possible that an incomprehensible trip to Putin could become the topic that would unite the Belarusian authorities and the opposition. It was during the absence of Lukashenko that the parties could have found a compromise and simply would not have let him back. Why do we, they say, have a Moscow agent here? Let him fly to Rostov..."