In the shadow of Vladimir Putin’s current showdown with the West, this time over whether Ukraine poses a threat to Russia or if it will in the future, Alexander Lukashenka’s artificial border-migrant crisis with the European Union is winding down. With it, Lukashenka’s gambit to force the European authorities and EU member states to interact with him directly and relax sanctions imposed for subverting an election, cracking down violently on street protests, and compelling a civilian airliner to land under duress to arrest an opposition blogger will soon conclude.
The timing of the arrival of the migrants on the border and the motivation behind their presence at the Belarusian borders with the European Union were fairly clear from the beginning. The embattled Belarusian leader sought to create a migrant crisis with Europe that he could then leverage to break out of his diplomatic isolation and limit his total dependence on Russian financial aid and diplomatic support. It failed when the incident threatened Russia’s own interests and the European Union and its partners found the tools to overcome Lukashenka.
Starting late this spring, Belarusian state travel agencies began granting visas to hundreds, and then thousands of individuals from the Middle East and elsewhere to visit Belarus for the purpose of “hunting tours,” one of the two exceptions to the Covid-era travel limitations to Belarus. These “hunting enthusiasts” were then dispatched directly to encampments along the borders Belarus shares with Lithuania and Poland to seek unauthorized entry to the European Union, where they could then claim asylum. The plight of these individuals grew worse as Poland and Lithuania dispatched their armed forces to close their borders while Belarusian border guards prevented the migrants from leaving the border zone, leaving them in increasingly dire, frozen conditions as winter set in.
Russia intervened in the crisis to impose a favorable outcome for its client, but ultimately fell short when Lukashenka threatened Europe with cutting off Russian gas transit. Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitri Peskov noted on November 9th that it was already a military issue as Moscow and Minsk opened dialogue “through all possible channels, including via special services.” Peskov continued, “There is an exchange of information [between Russia and Belarus]. But I repeat once again – this is a problem, a real problem.”
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attempted to turn the crisis into a money-making venture for Belarus by drawing a parallel to the migration of Syrians who fled civil war a decade ago. “When refugees were coming from Turkey to the EU, the EU allocated funding so that they would stay in Turkey,” Lavrov said. “Why it is also impossible to help Belarusians who have needs so that refugees, whom Poland and Lithuania do not want to let into their territory in any way, live in normal conditions?”
Russian support evaporated when Lukashenka threatened to cut off a Russian gas pipeline to Europe to ward off sanctions. Putin chided him saying, “He can, I guess, it’s no good, though, and I’ll talk to him about it … in case he just said it out of anger. This would be a violation of our transit contract and I hope it will not come to that.” Putin then described a deliberate gas cutoff as “not contributing to the development of our relations with Belarus as a transit country.”
The response from the European Union and its partners then proceeded in a more aggressive fashion. On November 12th, Turkish civil aviation authorities banned Syrians, Yemenis and Iraqis from direct flights o Minsk, Belarus or through Turkish airspace. On November 15th, Ireland-based aircraft leasing companies owning 17 of 30 planes currently used by Belavia, the Belarusian state air carrier, announced that the leasing contracts would be cancelled upon the imposition of the next round of European Union sanctions, imposed on December 2. On November 16th, Iraqi Airways began repatriating migrants back to their countries of origin. By November 26th, Lukashenka admitted that he was no longer able to carry on. “If Germans and Poles won’t listen to me today, it’s not my fault,” he said. “I will do whatever you want, even if it harms Poles and others. But you need to realize we can’t start a war to force a corridor through Poland to Germany.”
The migrant showdown between Belarus and the European Union took months to reach its crisis stage, created several weeks of an acute crisis, and ended within days of concerted actions by the larger powers in the region. As further sanctions by the European Union and the United States take effect, the cynical affair that led to the deaths of sixteen migrants appears to have concluded with no appreciable gain for Lukashenka.