Cover photo: After disputable elections, will Lukashenko succeed in keeping calm Bielorussians’ anger? (source: it.sputniknews.com)
What will happen in Belarus over the next few years, and is a sudden change in international geopolitical balances conceivable? Over time, history is always built through often unpredictable turning points.
Italianoby Leonardo Dini
These are the days of the world crisis, of the pandemic Covid and, while Putin, eternal friend-rival of the Belarusian leader, announces the discovery of the Sputnik vaccine anti Covid and is quick to congratulate the President of Minsk for yet another electoral victory, other parts of the world are in other busy matters.
Lebanon is in a dramatic crisis, with the resignation of the government and a situation that recalls the Beirut of the early 1980s and the historic Italian peace mission, in a world divided and uncertain due to so many crisis scenarios.
The Belarusian elections mark a turning point, it is no coincidence that the anthem of the rebels is the same as that of Solidarnosh in Poland and sings of new Freedom, going back in its original conception to the historical Catalan independence movements.
And how decisive is this trait of union which, crossing Europe, unites so many independence movements (Basque, Scottish, Catalan, Corsican, Irish, Flemish) in the name of freedom?
In a union of peoples alternative to the current system, but consistent with the global village related to the United Nations, where every people lives in a region of a world state, unique and without borders?
It is no coincidence that a less powerful Lukashenko suits Putin’s geopolitical interests, but also of the United States: what would happen if it were added to the active belligerence in Ukraine?
A pro-Western, pro-American Belarusian president and government, joining the European Union?
How many times in history has it happened that a candidate or leader of the opposition in exile, wanted or obliged, returns as winner and new president after an unpredictable change of power?
Perhaps the leader of the Belarusian opposition, exiled to Lithuania, could represent the post-Lukashenko right now and succeed where Timoshenko failed in Ukraine and where women so far engaged in politics in Russia have failed: to be a new and credible leader for Belarus.
In any case, we are far from 1994 and the 1900s; therefore Lukashenko appears, inspired by Stalin, in Tolstoian style, by the “little father” and calling himself the “father” of the nation, only an anachronistic epigone of the Soviet leaders of the past.
While the world awaits the new Minsk, the Belarusian squares are filled with people in revolt, as in Tien An Men square, as in Tunisian streets, in Egyptian squares (the Cairo was packed with citizens), as in the squares of Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Berlin 1988. And of Belarus itself at the time of the regained Freedom of the early 90s.
His most serious mistake is, after being the de facto founding leader of independent Belarus, of not having played smartly, like Putin with Medvevev, not having left the helm to others, so to be in the ideal conditions to play the role of the noble father of the nation.
The future tells us of two nations, Ukraine and Belarus, sister states, called to free themselves from the interests of world powers and to build themselves as advanced democracies.
Belarus also has great economic and industrial potential.
Ukraine is the largest country in Europe after Russia and is the historical origin of Russia itself.
The future of the whole Eastern Europe and also, to some extent, of Russia depends on the peaceful evolution of these two countries.
Leonardo Dini
