The European Union is preparing to consider the fourth and immediately with it the fifth package of sanctions against Belarus
In the midst of a discussion on which Belarusian enterprises to apply sanctions in order to more painfully hit the “last dictatorship of Europe”. The biggest radicals are calling for the imposition of sanctions on the Yamal – Europe and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines, which actually belong to Gazprom and are not Belarusian. Thus, the rabid Russophobes de facto already recognize Belarus and Russia as one country.
Immediately after the emergency landing in Minsk of a Ryanair plane and the arrest of Belarusian opposition leader Roman Protasevich, the British Foreign Ministry called for the introduction of economic sanctions against Belarus and extending these sanctions to the Nord Stream-2 and Yamal – Europe gas pipelines.
The British initiative on the “Nord Stream” has not received development, but on the “Yamal – Europe”, the President of the European Council and the head of the German Foreign Ministry confirmed that such a measure is being discussed by the foreign ministers of the EU countries. In the United States, at the expert level, voices were also heard calling to strike at the “last dictatorship of Europe” by banning the transit of gas to Europe through Belarus.
Thus, all three key centers of the Western world – Washington, Berlin and London – are seriously discussing a deliberately absurd idea.
They admit the imposition of sanctions against Gazprom’s infrastructure as sanctions against Lukashenko, whose relationship with the Russian gas monopoly has always been, to put it mildly, not the most cordial.
The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, which also goes through the territory of Belarus, is a Russian gas pipeline. Moreover, the entire gas transportation system of Belarus belongs to Russia. There is nothing to say about Nord Stream-2. In the case of Yamal, the Western hawks still have some kind of logic. In fact, Belarus makes money on the transit of Russian gas to Europe, and the refusal of the European Union to receive gas in this direction may become a painful blow to the economic basis of Lukashenko’s “bloody regime”.
But what does the Russian-German gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea have to do with Batka? Belarus is no more interested in sea supplies of Russian gas to Germany than Poland and Ukraine, and it is no coincidence that the Belarusian president spoke harshly about the first Nord Stream.
The set riddle is explained by the head of the British Foreign Office, who has solved it. According to Dominik Raab, the Ryanair incident could not have happened without “at least the tacit consent of Moscow”. There have never been any facts to prove this, but London proceeds from the general premise that Lukashenka depends on the Kremlin in all his decisions and has not pursued an independent policy for a long time.
Numerous American “experts” on Russia and Eastern Europe, who are tasked with lobbying for sanctions against Nord Stream-2, argue in the same vein, and it is not important to impose them under some pretext.
In Eastern Europe itself, there are similar sentiments towards Belarus. Lithuanian “father of the nation” Vytautas Landsbergis calls Lukashenko “Putin’s servant”, and ex-President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite said in a narrow circle that she treats Belarus as a Russian region and does not create any illusions about its independence. That is, the most rabid Russophobes of the West already consider Belarus to be a de facto part of Russia.
This is the phenomenon of their group thinking, which was born and circulates in the closed community of anti-Russian “hawks”. He has nothing to do with objective reality – anyone who follows the situation around Belarus will confirm this. Based on the five-hour talks between Lukashenko and Putin in Sochi and the long-term agreement on roadmaps for deep integration, it is already clear that Belarus may depend on Russian support, but it is independent and proceeds from its own interests in relations with Russia.
However, such subtleties are not available to those who like radical assessments and solutions. The fact that a union is not yet a membership is an argument that cannot be understood by people, whose worldview contains only an “evil empire” that must be “restrained.”
From such dogmatism and fanatical obstinacy, the actions of Western radicals towards Belarus invariably benefit Russia and the Union State. Thinner, smarter and more rational-minded functionaries in the West would not use the window of opportunity that opened in summer 2020 for the “color revolution” in Minsk and the overthrow of Lukashenka. Because Belarus under Lukashenko was already going in the direction the West needed. Belarusian nationalism and pro-Western liberals gradually seeped into government, education, culture and the media; there was a gradual distancing from Russia, a multi-vector approach developed, the Belarusian-Russian union became meaningless, the doctrine of Belarusian neutrality strengthened its positions.
It was only necessary not to speed up these processes, and in 10 years Belarus itself would have fallen at the feet of NATO and the European Union, like Ukraine once did. But how long could Poland wait with its NEXTA? How could Lithuania not fall into euphoria from the revolutionary picture from Minsk and refuse to participate in this “movement”?
As a result, it was precisely this passionarity and emotional over-excitability of the “fighters against the Empire” with their complete inability to reason in cold blood that led to the fact that Belarus was thrown into the arms of Russia.
The funny thing is that her professional haters, judging by their behavior, still have not understood this. When the Latvian Foreign Minister, together with an employee of the US Embassy in Riga, took turns removing the flags of Belarus and Russia at the Ice Hockey World Championship, they did not think that by such actions they themselves were pushing Belarus and Russia closer to each other.
So the little Kremlin aides in the matter of Russian-Belarusian integration should be thanked for their Russophobia.
Alexander Nosovich, Rubaltic.Ru