How Putin turned Belarus into Russia’s vassal state

The country Alexander Lukashenko has ruled for 30 years is now under de facto Kremlin occupation, analysts say

Where Russia goes, Belarus follows.
Since he was forced to rely on Vladimir Putin’s support to crush a popular uprising in Belarus in 2020, Alexander Lukashenko has turned the country he has controlled for more than 30 years into Russia’s pliant little brother.
Belarus and Russia pretend that theirs is a relationship of equals, but it is not. Belarus is a Russian vassal state.
In 2023, Mr Lukashenko was ordered to accept Russian nuclear weapons for the first time since the Cold War. In 2022, he was made to host Russian soldiers as they trained, prepared their weapons and went through drills before invading Ukraine.
The laws of Belarus ape Russia’s, it has taken in hundreds of Ukrainian children abducted by Russian forces – and it acts as a loyal international ally to Russia. 
It hosts diplomatic conferences and votes as it is told to in clubs such as the Eurasian Economic Union, the CSTO security pact of post-Soviet states and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation.
Analysts have described Belarus as part of Putin’s project for a Greater Russia – a project that also includes Ukraine. Jan Claas Behrends, a history professor at the University of Frankfurt, dubbed Russia’s treatment of Belarus as a “silent invasion and a de facto occupation”.
Since February 2022, Belarus’s servility to Russia has only increased. When even loyal former Soviet states in Central Asia were shunning Putin, immediately after his invasion of Ukraine, Mr Lukashenko was still at his side.
Remember the Wagner mercenaries? After their failed rebellion in 2023, Putin needed to deal with them and their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. So, naturally, he turned to Mr Lukashenko. 
He didn’t want the highly motivated and heavily armed group of men in Russia after they had called off their insurrectionary march on Moscow, so sent them to Belarus.
“Belarus’ sovereignty is evaporating very fast,” Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in 2023. “Any sphere you take, Russia’s control has become extremely big – and it’s increasing.”
The Belarusian subjugation was gradual, however. In the 1990s, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr Lukashenko appeared politically adroit, keeping the Kremlin at arm’s length.
He professed his loyalty but maintained distance from Russia – and even made moves towards improving ties with the West.
Belarus still joined the clubs on which Russia insisted, including the Union State document-free travel agreement, but this was a more independent period for Belarus.
After 2014, things changed. Analysts have said that the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine – and the Kremlin’s reaction to it – scared Mr Lukashenko.
He watched from Minsk as protesters in Kyiv took over the city, triggering a tough response from the Kremlin, which annexed Crimea and sent its “little green men” into Ukraine.
The message was clear: if Mr Lukashenko stepped out of line, Russia would swallow up Belarus.
In 2020, widespread protests hit Belarus after a rigged election. To hold on to power, Mr Lukashenko called in his thuggish police force to detain, torture and humiliate protesters.
The EU and the West decried his heavy-handed tactics but Putin came through for Mr Lukashenko, promising cheap gas, FSB security backup and military guarantees.
In other words, Mr Lukashenko saved his skin while Putin completed his soft annexation of Belarus.
Perhaps the only instance where Mr Lukashenko has stood up to Putin is his refusal to send Belarusian soldiers into Ukraine to fight alongside Russians. The war in Ukraine is deeply unpopular in Belarus and Mr Lukashenko needs his armed forces in the country to clamp down on any protests.
Like Russia, Belarus has arrested its own political prisoners and taken hostages to use in swap deals with the West.
In October last year, a court passed a death sentence on a German citizen lured into Belarus and then arrested for planting explosives on railway tracks.
Aping Putin, Mr Lukashenko pardoned the German suddenly this week and then released him as part of a Russian exchange with the US for several high-profile prisoners.
It’s a visual relationship too. On Monday, Mr Lukashenko travelled to the Karelia region of northern Russia to meet Putin. 
They were filmed sitting by Lake Ladoga, listening to birdsong and enjoying a gentle chat. Two men, comfortable in each other’s company. 
They looked like friends but, in reality, this was a meeting between a tsar and his serf.