Belarus Between East and West
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference in Moscow, February 18, 2022. Sputnik/Sergey Guneev/Kremlin via REUTERS.
By Abby Poprocki ‘28
In September 2025, Belarus unexpectedly released fifty-two political prisoners, including foreign nationals, marking the most significant effort by Minsk to thaw tensions with the West in years. This most recent development came as part of a deal between Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and US President Donald Trump in which the US agreed to lift sanctions on Belarusian airline Belavia. Additionally, the leaders discussed the potential to re-establish a trade relationship between the two countries and reopen the US embassy in Minsk.
Minsk's diplomatic outreach and apparent efforts to ease relations with the US and the EU raise the question: Is Belarus, arguably Russia’s closest ally, seeking re-engagement with the West or are these steps merely a strategy to loosen sanctions without disrupting Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule and close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin?
Lukashenko’s Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, defeating a communist party leader in a notably free and fair election in post-Soviet Union Belarus. While he was originally an independent populist whose platform was built on anti-corruption, once in power he developed an authoritarian political agenda that has maintained his regime for the past 31 years. He remains the sole president Belarus has known in its post-Soviet history.
Lukashenko’s agenda has revealed three major components: limiting the development of a free-market economy in favor of restoring a Soviet-era economic system, maintaining close political ties with Russia, and inhibiting the formation of a middle class, the socioeconomic group often at the root of rebellion to undemocratic rule. He has repeatedly used political repression, from controlling the media to imprisoning political opponents, in order to achieve this vision.
These goals are unsurprising to those who recall that Lukashenko was the sole legislator in Belarus to vote against the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In fact, he signed a deal in 1997 to create a “union state” with Russia, which would have established a single government, currency, and legislative body for the two countries. Although Belarus halted this union when Russian President Vladimir Putin rose to power in 2000 and integration has not been fully realized, the two countries have remained politically and economically intertwined. Belarus’s state-controlled economy, whose GDP has been stagnant since 2012, has relied on Russian loans and energy subsidies to stay afloat. Consequently, almost all of Belarus’s exports go to their eastern partner. After years of weathering Western sanctions and criticism for human rights violations by remaining closely allied with Putin, Minsk now finds itself under growing pressure from both Russia and the West.
2020 and 2022 Developments
Events in 2020 and 2022 forced Belarus further away from the west and closer towards a union state with Russia. In the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, Lukashenko’s grip on power was challenged by the popular opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Desperate to maintain his position, Lukashenko falsified election results, triggering backlash from both the Belarusian opposition and the international community. Thousands of Belarusians took to the streets to protest the fraudulent election. Though dozens were imprisoned and tortured by the government, the protests quickly grew into a pro-democracy movement across the nation, causing Lukashenko to seek assistance from Vladimir Putin in a last-ditch effort to maintain his grip on power. Putin sent so-called “peacekeeping” forces to put down the opposition movement, replaced Belarusian media with Russian “propagandists”, and facilitated the imprisonment or exile of dissidents. Subsequently, Belarus’s political scene has mirrored that of Russia’s, with a tightly controlled civil society and ban on opposition parties.
Soon after, Belarus became a party to Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the winter of 2021 and 2022, over 30,000 Russian troops were stationed in Belarus under the pretense of a joint military training exercise. Instead of returning to Russia after the exercises concluded in February, however, they used Belarus as an avenue through which to launch their invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has stationed troops in Belarus, launched missiles from Belarusian territory, and used the country as a transit route to resupply the Russian army, therefore violating the country’s sovereignty. Despite this, there has been no evidence of Belarusian troops joining Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine. Instead, it appears that Putin is cashing in the favor owed to him by Lukashenko after Russia protected his rule in 2020. The majority of Belarusian citizens actively oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s role in it, though Lukashenko has made no move to liberate Belarus from Russia’s will. Meanwhile, as the international community has escalated sanctions on Belarus for its role in Russia’s war, Minsk has become further indebted to Moscow in an effort to keep its economy afloat. By slowly taking control of Belarus’s political institutions and economy, as well as ignoring its sovereignty, Putin has made his desired union state all but a formal reality.
Decoding Belarus’s Western Overtures
As the war in Ukraine continues, Belarus’s economy has become increasingly strained and dependent on Moscow, which has given support in exchange for commitments to further economic integration. Minsk has lost its second-largest export market, Ukraine, as well as access to EU and Ukrainian ports. Given the mounting pressure to identify new trade partners and safeguard Belarus’s economic autonomy, it is unsurprising that Lukashenko would feel compelled to seek limited engagement with the West as a means of loosening sanctions, a goal advanced by the recent release of political prisoners.
Moreover, members of the international community have argued that Lukashenko is attempting to capitalize on Trump’s desire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine by presenting himself as a mediator between Washington and Moscow and an ally in the push for peace in Ukraine. However, Minsk continues its crackdowns on political opposition and attacks on Belarusian civil society, and has yet to deny support for Russia’s war on Ukraine or limit Russian access to its soil. It appears that Lukashenko’s overtures towards the west are merely an effort to shore up Belarus’s fragile economy. Yet, the move indicates a fear of growing Russian demands and Lukashenko’s desire to maintain Belarus’s sovereignty, something the West may be able to capitalize on to pull the country out of Putin’s pocket.