Assad's Dirt For Lukashenka

The longest day has an end...

Russian publicist Viktor Postnov writes for The Moscow Times about the consequences of the "elections" in Belarus for Lukashenka:

— It would seem that this campaign can go wrong? But Bashar al-Assad brought some dirt. 95%, drawn by the Syrian dictator in similar "elections", did not save him from collapse and left an unpleasant aftertaste for other tyrants.

Lukashenka, who limited himself to "modest" 86.82%, did not fail to stand up for his usurper colleague ("No Assad is a dictator. He treated people, never killed anyone") and called what happened a lesson for Belarus. The lesson really is that the longest day has an end. There comes a time when violence no longer saves regimes.

If the "elections" in Belarus showed anything, it was the complete lack of enthusiasm in society for supporting Lukashenko. The shares that imitated it were staged and motivated — not so much with a carrot as with a stick.

The journalist writes that Lukashenka's proposals to "make friends" with the EU do not find a response in Brussels:

— Belarus is now perceived by many politicians not as an independent entity, but as a "backyard of Russia". Therefore, quiet, but numerous signals from Minsk remain unanswered.

In the East, Lukashenka is also not doing well. The visit to China announced for mid-January did not take place. Probably, it was not canceled, but postponed (according to one version, the reason for this was the "swine flu" of the ruler of Belarus), but still unpleasant.

And from the DPRK, the hatch came at all. In response to Lukashenko's statement that Pyongyang proposed a summit, Kim Ye Jong, the sister of the North Korean dictator, made a refutation, rather offensively emphasizing more than two years of unsuccessful attempts by Minsk to ask for a visit.

Being tied to Russia at the moment helps the Belarusian authorities maintain a stable economic situation. But at the same time it is a source of various threats. Therefore, Lukashenka would ideally like to return to the times when he was balancing between the Russian Federation, the EU and China. But at this stage it looks unrealistic.

Inside the country, Lukashenka also has little new to offer. He is increasingly moving "back to the USSR". It comes to the anecdotal: Lukashenka recently demanded to "study the experience of Soviet trade", which, if it can serve as an example, is of an exclusively negative nature: a total deficit, mass rudeness of sellers, etc.

The physical health of the ruler does not get better. Increasingly, there are shots that show that Lukashenka moves with difficulty. We can say that for his seventh term, he does not go, but hobbles.

Externally, the situation looks stable — as under Brezhnev, whom Lukashenka suddenly mentioned, talking to journalists after visiting the polling station. But the withering of the leader, and with him the personalist regime, has already begun. This process is NOT reversible.

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