Apparently it’s all a bit of a Minsk up!
‘The crisis in Belarus has developed at a scorching pace and some analysts said Putin had misjudged the momentum of the protests.
“Putin has been surprised, perhaps no less than Lukashenko himself, about what’s happened,” said Gould-Davis. “And they don’t know how to effectively respond to a rapidly changing and inherently unpredictable situation. No one does. But they will want to control it.”’ Duh!
Lukashenko has been on the phone to Putin and in desperation would have said something like; ‘If I go, who do you think will be the next cab off the rank Vlad?’ But that logic won’t impress Vlad the audacious! Anyway a TINA moment has arrived for Vlad or -as he sees this- him on behalf of Mother Russia no less.
A week after the phony elections and the unrest is now peacefully growing but the police after just one death of a demonstrator -from their brutality- have eased up and clearly they are unable to stop the large scale milling around that will now – in the grand tradition of such struggles- become a daily feature of Minsk life as the main square or something has to be occupied immediately.
It may look to the police a bit like visions of the old East German police and look what became of them! They might not see this as a good bet to stay out of jail themselves now.
Lukashenko is clearly finished if the demonstrators press their advantage now! The only thing that could keep him going for even a couple of weeks is a lack of immediate action to send him on his way!
Lukashenko is gone but not in the way that Assad was ‘gone’!
BBC reports from Moscow say Lukashenko is seen by Russian insiders as ‘a dead man walking’ and that seems reasonable enough to me so I wonder why he was congratulated for his ‘win’. Vlad and Jinping, just last week congratulated Lukashenko on his ‘win’. That was a stupid blunder! Silence was a no brainer! What do they look like to the people of Belarus now! Not pretty!
This is now an inevitable turn to the west and a link to the peoples of the Baltics and Ukraine.
So this week all is apparently forgiven from the recent arrests of Russian mercenaries; whatever that was all about.
The world is starkly divided with such idiocy on full display. Previous generations just didn’t hold such elections in the first place! That old form of tyranny makes a bit more sense to me than this farce and that is what it is. Anti democrats of the world unite because you have empires to lose! So just as Jinping is reacting to Hong Kong so will Putin react to his ‘territory’ Belarus! Putin really believes that territory is Russian! He is not going to bow out of this contest. That is not the nature of the little Czar.
Yet there is much more than a little truth in this; ‘While monitoring Belarus closely and discouraging further state violence, U.S. and EU policymakers must start preparing for the potentially much more devastating flashpoint that is Russia. No dictatorship is permanent, and in reaching for an outer empire in Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, Moscow’s inner empire could start to crumble.’
Like everyone else I’ve watched the slow train from Minsk for the last few weeks and so far… no surprises! The week after another election has been blatantly stolen by Lukashenko (as he has done often enough before) and naturally his police state thugs were out beating and arresting anyone who objected. Calling a clear and big election win a gigantic loss is bound to deliver a mass turnout on the streets so they had quite a few to put in the slammer and it just got bigger. But his thug state is only going to hold together for a couple of weeks because the rally’s are just not big and angry enough.. just yet. But events are moving to fast for either tyrant now that me thinks this is starting to get a bit of the Nicolae Ceaușescu feel about it!
So curiously the ½ theory makes some sense in this instance but why not? After all, I have always half thought along the lines of the half theorists!
‘Andrej Babiš, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, tweeted on Sunday: “What happened to us in 1968 must not happen in Belarus. The European Union must act.”’ I wonder what he thinks they will do exactly. They will undoubtedly offer a great deal of revolutionary advice! That will start by; ‘keep up the pressure’, ‘keep the masses on the streets’; all the Lenin and Mao stuff for sure!
There has been an election and this can now only be resolved in a hand over to the real winner; for an eventual re-run under proper free and fair conditions and thus for her husband a very probable 2nd win.
Putin is scrambling because there is no legitimate candidate for him. This is a country that has to go western and that does not fit Putin’s plans in any shape. The new leadership won’t be any ‘worker’ politicians or Marxist types that’s for sure! This struggle is for western style democracy in the same manner as the Iberian peninsular in the seventies but it’s without a workable future! The resolution of this one simple democracy issue is whatever else it is economically doomed from day1. It will fix nothing of the peoples livelihood issues. Capitalism is not capable of fixing the current crisis in Belarus. Putin might have to play the long game to get back in to Belarus but I can’t see that working.
Will a big Russian meddling work and Belarus settle down for decades like a 1968 Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia? Of course not and Putin can’t believe that it would.
On the other hand what else can he do other than meddle? He might ask his advisors the difficult question ‘Does anyone have an alternative?’ He could be met with silence and a perception of TINA resolves a lot of issues for tyrants. Let’s see what turns up might be the shrug of shoulders casting of the die.
The more probable course is a stall in the democratic struggle after a short term hand over and then a much more bloody building-up period being required to even get to the first stage of freedom from the gangster rule. If the army cracks all bets are off. Here’s hoping of course!
So TINA for Russian meddling at some point!
The Russians are making all manner of noises that will either end in some kind of meddling -for the sake of law and order- or the beginning of the end for Putin will have started.
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