6318
[Second Issue of the Day]
#11
Financial Times (UK)
20 June 2002
Alexander the great embarrassment
By Robert Cottrell in Moscow
The news on Russian state television on Wednesday morning included a weekly segment called "Moscow and Minsk", 15 minutes of propaganda for the 'Russia-Belarus Union' that is supposed to be taking shape following the signing of a largely meaningless treaty between the two countries six years ago. I agonised for the poor presenter, and for the writers struggling with her script.
Their job was difficult enough at the best of times, finding peasants and politicians to fill the airwaves with mindless pap about a supposed future union that few people in Russia thought would ever happen and nobody much cared about anyway. But now it has become downright impossible, because even the two countries' leaders have stopped believing in the union.
Last week President Vladimir Putin poured scorn on the claims and ambitions of his Belarus counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, who insists on Belarus as the equal of Russia. And, this week, perhaps unwisely from his own point of view, the wild-eyed Mr Lukashenko has answered Mr Putin back at length. Now we all know they have come to despise one other.
According to Mr Lukashenko, Mr Putin is offering Belarus no more than a proportionate role in any new unified state, if that is the form the union takes. And, since Belarus has a population one-fifteenth the size of Russia's and an economy one-thirtieth the size, the proportion will not be a big one. Belarus would become just one out of 90 regions in the Russian Federation, Mr Lukashenko said at a press conference on Tuesday. And that, he insisted, was out of the question. An "insult" to Belarus.
Alternatively, Mr Lukashenko explained, Mr Putin was proposing a union between the two countries "similar to the European Union", whatever that meant. To which Mr Lukashenko, by his own account, replied: "We do not need it. We have the experience of life and co-operation in the Soviet Union and this experience should be used".
But what really sent Mr Lukashenko over the top were comments made publicly by Mr Putin after the two leaders met in St Petersburg early last week. Mr Putin said Mr Lukashenko was contradicting himself by campaigning for a union with Russia in which Belarus's sovereign rights were also preserved. He pointed out that Belarus's economy was only 3 per cent the size of Russia's. And he threw in one splendid metaphor, according to a transcript: "Let's keep the meatballs and the flies apart". Whatever that meant, it did not sound flattering.
Mr Lukashenko's press conference came in response to these remarks, and he did not disappoint. "Throughout the whole course of the dialogue within the Belarus-Russia Union, the union has been torpedoed chiefly by the Russian side", he said.
"We, Belarus, have been accused of being a burden on Russia, a burden that wants to solve its domestic problems at Russia's expense and they will send us food and drink. We have heard all this, but not at the highest level. Now we have heard it at the highest level. Good. Now we know the position of the Russian leadership."
That sort of talk sounds as though it should precede in short order the tearing-up of the treaty by which Russia and Belarus first pledged themselves to ever-closer union. They could agree privately that each would blame the other side publicly for the fiasco, then see what they could do to rebuild normal relations.
A bit of a mess, you might say, but arguably the sort of thing Mr Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart at the time, Boris Yeltsin, should have foreseen when they proclaimed their half-baked plans in the first place.
The trouble was, neither Mr Yeltsin nor Mr Lukashenko cared much about the practicalities of a union. Their minds were elsewhere entirely. Mr Yeltsin wanted the political boost that would come with the hint he was starting to reassemble the much-lamented Soviet Union.
He was also making his contingency plans for a third or fourth term of office, despite the two-term limit in the Russian constitution. He could declare that the union of Russia with Belarus created a new country, or at any rate demanded a new constitution, and start his presidencies all over again.
As for Mr Lukashenko, I believe he also had two main aims. The obvious one was to soak Russia for all the subsidies he could get from it in terms of soft rouble loans and cheap Russian gas. The hidden one was to build himself a bridge into the Russian political system. He would deliver Belarus into a full union only when he was guaranteed the job of vice-president under Mr Yeltsin. Then, when Mr Yeltsin's health or willpower gave way (accelerated, no doubt, by the strains of having Mr Lukashenko as his number two), the succession would be clear.
I take it from Mr Lukashenko's outburst this week that he has finally written off his great political hopes. Mr Yeltsin has retired, and Mr Putin has no obvious need for political tricks
But at the same time, Mr Lukashenko and his country have grown addicted to the subsidies they get from Russia. Belarus only functions at all because Russia sells it gas so cheaply.
The Russian central bank is helping stabilise Belarus's ruined currency by offering rouble loans worth $150m - of which $50m was sent last week on the very day that Mr Putin made his public criticisms, which can hardly be a coincidence. The currency stabilisation effort is supposed to be the prelude to a currency union, though it is hard to imagine this going ahead between two countries otherwise engaged in high-level slanging matches.
One worry now may be that if relations with Russia stay chilly, Mr Lukashenko could be tempted to seek new sponsors among other awkward countries feeling bewildered or snubbed by Russia's pro-western drift - such as China, and Iraq. But even Mr Lukashenko must see that this will merely give both Russia and the West a common interest in unseating him, and with no obvious penalty for doing so.
It is hard not to admire the frankness and accuracy with which Mr Putin has finally diagnosed Russia's interests in all this. They do not lie with promoting the career of Mr Lukashenko, nor with giving him more money to further ruin Belarus, one of the poorest countries in Europe.
It is equally hard not to regret that Mr Putin felt so differently last year, when Mr Lukashenko crowned seven years of authoritarian rule with a rigged election victory on September 9 that brought him a further five-year term.
Mr Putin looked on with every sign of approval. But that, of course, was two days before the world changed, and Mr Putin with it. No wonder Mr Putin has come to seem so impatient with Mr Lukashenko. Not only is Mr Lukashenko pushy and grabby and anti-western. He also stands as an embarrassing public reminder of the sort of ally Mr Putin so recently used to value.
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