Lukashenko accuses the west of trying to destabilise Belarus

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko accused the west of trying to destabilise his country when he met with Vladimir Putin after a tumultuous week prompted the EU to ready sanctions on Minsk for forcing a Ryanair flight to land and arresting a dissident on board.

Speaking with the Russia’s president on Friday, Lukashenko said the EU was “trying to cause us problems” and said he would show Putin “who these people are” from a cache of secret documents he said he had brought in a suitcase.

“They are trying to destabilise the situation to the level of last August,” Lukashenko said, referring to mass protests that he brutally repressed after they erupted last summer following his highly dubious election victory.

Lukashenko was in Sochi, seeking Russian backing after the Ryanair incident, and subsequent detention of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, left him a pariah in Europe.

In what has been taken as a tacit sign of Russian support, two European airlines cancelled flights to Moscow on Thursday after Russian authorities failed to approve new routes that avoided Belarus’s airspace. EU governments had demanded their airlines steer clear of Belarus and banned its state airline Belavia from EU airports.

Russia’s aviation agency on Friday said it had needed more time to approve the new routes “due to the increased volume of requests”. It added that European airlines had flown to and from Russia over Belarus 113 times in the past 24 hours, and used alternative routes 53 times.

“What did Belavia have to do with this? They really went to town on them. What for?” Lukashenko told Putin. “If it hadn’t been for you at this time . . . I saw Moscow refuse to accept planes if they fly around Belarus. They got the message immediately.”

The two leaders can often seem like awkward allies. So their meeting is seen a crucial test for Lukashenko who wants to show the west and domestic opponents his country can ride out increasing international isolation.

“If Russia wasn’t supporting them politically, there’s no way Belarus would act like this — not just downing the plane, but . . . repressions inside the country,” said Dzianis Melyantsou, an expert at the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations.

“Even when Belarus behaves outlandishly, and it seems there’s not much in it for Russia to support Belarus, Russia still shows it’s the key ally. So Lukashenko is a lot more confident than he would be without that,” Melyantsou added.

The meeting in Sochi was the fourth between Putin and Lukashenko since protests broke out in Belarus last year, reinforcing their hitherto faltering relationship.

Belarus had tried to reduce its dependence on Russian oil, explored restoring US ties, expelled Moscow’s ambassador, seized a state-owned Russian bank and arrested 32 Russian mercenaries.

Since last summer, however, Moscow has offered Minsk billions of dollars in loans; defended Belarus’s right to intercept the plane; has not called for Sapega’s release, even though she is a Russian citizen; and stood by as Belarus’s security services harassed dissidents.

Belarus’s president has meanwhile insisted that exiled bloggers such as Protasevich are part of a US-funded dress rehearsal for attempts to overthrow Putin.

“Lukashenko has a compelling argument: Russia and Belarus have a common enemy in the west. Thus, you either support me or you eventually lose Belarus to the west,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Even so, the Ryanair incident may make Belarus a problematic ally for Russia, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R. Politik.

“It’s one thing when you’re doing an integration project with a country that everyone else respects. It’s another thing where you’re embracing a state that nobody else recognises as legitimate.”

In a possible portent of that faltering legitimacy, the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization agreed late on Thursday to investigate Minsk’s forced Ryanair grounding, with an interim report expected by June 26.

Lithuania also expelled two Belarusian diplomats on Friday, saying that their activities were “incompatible with diplomatic status”. The foreign ministry tweeted that this “also shows solidarity w/#Latvia after [Belarus] expelled employees . . . in Minsk.”

Ukraine meanwhile said it would prohibit any Belarus-registered planes from flying over national airspace as of this weekend.

Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv, Richard Milne in Oslo