On January 20, prosecutors from the United States charged four Belarusian officials with aircraft piracy after diverting a flight to the Belarussian capital Minsk to arrest opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich, according to Reuters.
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Belarus has come under fire from the European community for what is seen as an orchestrated attempt to destabilize Poland and Lithuania and pressure the EU to relax sanctions on President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus. These tensions stem from an ongoing border crisis, in which migrants are being systematically pressured, in part by Belarusian officials, to enter Europe through Belarus’s border with Poland and Lithuania.
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According to CNN, Belarusian security forces arrested 33 Russian mercenaries on charges of terrorism and destabilization prior to the country’s contested election in August. The mercenaries work for Wagner, a private military firm known to be the righthand of the Russian military. Wagner is believed to be sponsored by St. Petersburg businessman and oligarch, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The BBC reports that the firm is also believed to be covertly overseen by Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
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A member of Belarus’ female opposition coalition, Maria Kolesnikova, ripped up her passport to prevent forced deportation to her native Ukraine before being abducted by masked men on September 8, according to Forbes. Kolesnikova is the only member of her opposition coalition to remain in Belarus after the release of the election results favoring incumbent President Lukashenko. CNN reports that Kolesnikova’s colleagues Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, leader of the opposition, and Veronika Tsepkalo, the third member of the coalition, fled to Ukraine and Lithuania out of fear of imprisonment by the Lukashenko administration.
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Belarus has been gripped with violent protests caused by the controversial re-election of president Alexander Lukashenko. According to CNN, the country’s Central Election Commission announced that Alexander Lukashenko won with 80.23% of the vote, while opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya stood at 9.9%.
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As of 2020, many Central Asian and Eastern European states are still led by demagogues and united by the common threads of conflict, cronyism, and dubious elections.
Read MoreThe “stability” under Lukashenko’s tight grip on power is a major source of the president’s public support, especially when the political situation in Belarus is compared to that of neighboring Ukraine.
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