Global Elections Update: Belarus’ Russia Problem and the Potential Return to a Multi-Vector Foreign Policy

Late last month, Belarus’ President Aleksander Lukashenko secured another five-year term in a landslide victory. Despite being widely labeled as fraudulent by international observers, the election was conducted with virtually no domestic opposition. This contrasted with the election in 2020, which saw mass protests against Lukashenko’s reelection and a subsequent government crackdown on political opposition, civil society, and the media. The subsequent imposition of sanctions imposed on the Lukashenko regime and the Belarusian economy by the US, EU, and its other allies have been highly effective in curbing the Lukashenko regime’s ability to finance itself. Despite this, Western sanctions’ impact on the Belarusian economy have harmed Belarusian citizens and driven many to emigrate, which has contributed to a hollowing out of Belarusian civil society in the country. While the results of the most recent elections suggest that Lukashenko is in control, extending his 30-year rule has increasingly come at the cost of Belarus’ sovereignty.

Before 2020, Lukashenko managed to maintain his power through repressive independent rule. Despite his longstanding pursuit of integrating Belarus’ economy, military, and security with that of Russia—most notably through the Treaty on the Union of Russia and Belarus signed in 1997—Lukashenko has regularly sought to exercise an independent foreign policy. This has served as a check against the Kremlin, who, recognizing Belarus’s geostrategic importance and the cultural and linguistic similarities, has sought to accelerate the country’s integration into Russia. This is consistent with Putin’s broader ambitions to build a new Russian state modeled on the historical Kingdom of Kievan Rus (the progenitor of the modern Russian state), which includes large parts of Ukraine and Belarus.

Lukashenko has frequently stated his commitment to pursuing a multi-vector foreign policy, maintaining cultural and economic ties with Belarus’ immediate neighbors and the EU as part of this strategy. Despite occasional tensions, this approach has enabled him to serve as a go-between for the West and Russia, which was most visible in his decision to host talks between Russia and Ukraine to end the war in the Donbas in 2014.

Post-2020, the Lukashenko regime’s reliance on the Kremlin has grown considerably, limiting its ability to pursue an independent foreign policy. Fearful of the unrest in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Lukashenko launched a brutal crackdown, relying on Russian support through arms and equipment to put down the protests. In exchange for this support, Lukashenko was forced into formal and informal agreements ceding Belarusian sovereignty to Russia, leaving Lukashenko and Belarus heavily politically dependent on Russia.

The response by the U.S., EU, and other Western partners in 2021 to the post-election crackdown has heightened Minsk’s near-total economic dependence on Russia. Western sanctions against Belarus’ state-owned potash fertilizer industry and the embargo imposed by its European neighbors have impacted Belarusian society and contributed to a mass exodus of civic and business leaders from Belarus.

Western sanctions also forced the country to rely on Russia as a customer and transshipment point for most exports. Unlike Russia’s fertilizer industry, which was similarly targeted by Western sanctions, Belarus’ industry has not recovered, depriving Lukashenko of a key source of income and a basis for diplomatic relations with countries, particularly those in the EU.

The Kremlin has increasingly taken advantage of Lukashenko’s vulnerability post-2020. This is evidenced by the degree to which Lukashenko has allowed the Kremlin to use Belarus as a military outpost effectively: first with Russia staging its invasion of Ukraine from Belarus and their continued bombing of the country using Belarusian airbases; followed by Lukashenko’s decision to house Wagner forces in Belarus in 2023; and most recently, Russia stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus, a decision preceded by a constitutional referendum in 2022 that repealed language on Belarus’ non-nuclear status in the country’s constitution.

Despite these developments, Russia’s war in Ukraine may outline the limits of the Kremlin’s ability to dictate the direction of Belarusian domestic and foreign policy. With Russia’s army increasingly facing a shortage of manpower and forced to draw on soldiers from Africa, South Asia, and North Korea, it is interesting to note that Belarusian soldiers have not been conscripted on a large scale to fight in Ukraine. Belarusian society is overwhelmingly against Belarus joining the war on Russia’s side, with over 90% rejecting the idea in a public opinion poll. Given the precariousness of Lukashenko’s position, his regime would face substantial risk in deploying Belarusian forces to Ukraine. Such a decision could spark renewed civil unrest in the country, endangering both Lukashenko’s continued rule and the Kremlin’s careful progress towards the realization of a Russia-Belarus union-state and reconstitution of an expanded Russian state.

While Lukashenko has sought to counter-balance its growing dependence on Russia by expanding its relations with some of Russia’s other strategic allies like Iran, these efforts are unlikely to reduce its reliance on Russia. Instead, Belarus’s best chance of countering its dependence on Russia is through engagement with the new Trump Administration. Notably, the new administration has not joined its Western allies in condemning the recent elections in Belarus. Instead, on the day of the election, Belarus released an American citizen who was detained during the Biden administration. On February 12^th, Belarus released three more individuals, including an American citizen and a journalist affiliated with Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe. Based on publicly available information, it is unclear how many American citizens remain in Belarusian custody.

Based on recent reports, the prisoner releases are part of recent and semi-informal bilateral negotiations between the U.S. government and the Lukashenko regime, which are unrelated to the ongoing bilateral dialogue between the Trump Administration and the Kremlin. The Lukashenko government is seeking a relaxation of U.S. sanctions against Belarusian banks and the potash fertilizer industry in return for the release of prisoners. Given the lack of information on the number of remaining Americans in Belarusian custody, it is unclear both how much longer the Lukashenko regime can rely on using American prisoners as a bargaining chip and what other bargaining chips the regime can employ in negotiations with the U.S.

The early focus on Belarus’ potash fertilizer industry is interesting given the Trump Administration’s expected imposition of broad tariffs against Canadian imports. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. is 93% net import reliant on foreign sources of Potash fertilizers, with Canada accounting for 79% of all Potash fertilizer imports between 2020 and 2023. Russia and Belarus, by contrast, respectively accounted for 11% and 4% of all imports. Prior to the imposition of sanctions by the U.S. in 2021, Russian and Belarusian potash fertilizer exports accounted for 40% of global production, with the U.S. being a significant destination. While Belarus’ ability to export potash fertilizer is currently constrained by its lack of access to transportation infrastructure, it will be interesting to observe whether easing these sanctions could reduce U.S. reliance on Canadian imports as part of the Administration’s broader tariff push.

Although current negotiations are being led by the same State Department officials who led U.S. engagement with Belarus under the Biden Administration, the prisoner releases represent a potential shift in U.S. policy towards Belarus. If Lukashenko successfully gets the U.S. to roll back sanctions against Belarus, there is a possibility that it could begin to reverse the trend of Belarus’s growing reliance on Russia. While lifting U.S. tariffs would send an important signal, it is unclear whether the Trump Administration would be able to or even interested in convincing EU leadership to lift sanctions against Belarus, or convincing Baltic states like Lithuania to end their economic embargos against Belarus, which have blocked its ability to export products to the global market.

Based on the initial statement by the White House officials, it appears that the U.S. Government intends to keep negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, bilateral between the U.S. and Russia for the time being. Given that the talks are still in the early stages, it is unclear whether Belarus could eventually be included. While it appears unlikely at this stage that Belarus will play host to negotiations like in 2014, Lukashenko might be positioned to leverage Belarus’s role in playing host to the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine as a pretext for conducting its unilateral negotiations with the U.S. Lukashenko could offer guarantees to the U.S. against Russian troops’ continued presence in Belarus as an assurance against a potential resurgence in Russian aggression towards Ukraine once peace has been achieved in Ukraine.

It is unclear whether Lukashenko would be willing to risk his relationship with the Kremlin by pursuing separate negotiations with the U.S. In addition, while Belarus might be able to get U.S. sanctions removed and potentially normalize its relations with the U.S., given the growing rift between the U.S. and EU on Ukraine, a breakthrough in negotiations between Belarus and the U.S. would likely result in improvement in Belarus’s relations with the EU and, by extension, the possible lifting of EU sanctions against Belarus. Further, it is important not to underestimate the critical role of Belarus’s opposition movement in exile in Lithuania, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, in the EU’s decision-making on Belarus. Through Tsikhanouskaya’s advocacy, the EU has maintained economic pressure on the Lukashenko regime through the semi-regular impositions of sanctions packages against Belarus to close loopholes enabling sanctions evasion.

Another challenge is the potential timing of a decision by the U.S. and, subsequently, the EU to lift sanctions against Belarus. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, EU countries, particularly Baltic nations, have set into motion plans to disconnect their grids from Russia via Belarus and reorient infrastructure projects to focus on further connectivity with Western Europe. These efforts have seen recent progress, with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia announcing on February 8^th that they had disconnected their grids from Russia and Belarus and connecting their grid to the EU via Poland. This effort signals a broader trend: Belarus’s neighbors are looking to reorient infrastructure away from Russia and Belarus and toward the EU. If EU sanctions are not lifted in a relatively timely manner, Belarus may find itself entirely dependent on Russian infrastructure to be able to export its goods internationally. While the White House and the Kremlin held a first round of peace talks this week in Riyadh, the timeline and outcome of potential negotiations are uncertain.

Even if U.S. sanctions against Belarus are lifted, it is unclear to what extent Lukashenko will be able to reverse the trend of Belarus’ growing dependence on Russia. In the near term, it remains unlikely that the EU will lift sanctions against Belarus that have impeded its ability to export products to international markets, meaning Belarusian industry will remain dependent on Russia as a market and transshipment point. The outcome of peace negotiations on Ukraine – and the Lukashenko regime’s role in that process – may have far-reaching implications for Belarus’ sovereignty and ability to resume its pursuit of a multi-vector foreign policy.