Alexander Lukashenko is now sitting on a volcano. Obsessed with repression and personal security issues, after being nearly swept away last summer by an unprecedented wave of protest in this country of 9.5 million people. The extent of the anger, sparked by economic stagnation, the disastrous management of the pandemic and then fueled by police violence, also reveals the frustration accumulated during the twenty-six years of his reign.
The finding among economists is unanimous: dependence on aid from the Russian big brother is total. The promise to rebuild a socialist paradise (70 to 80% of the GDP is directly under the control of the state) sheltered from the capitalist social crash is only an optical illusion. Investigative site Openmedia.io has calculated that Russia has spent nearly $ 120 billion in twenty-five years to keep the local economy afloat. Minsk thus remains in the sphere of influence of Moscow, in exchange for injections of capital, deliveries of energy at the discount and a privileged access to the Russian market.
“If we count per capita, we have received from Russia three or four times as much as the Poles or Slovaks received from the European Union, for a much worse result,” said economist Andrei Nikulin. The
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regime defends its calamitous economic management by explaining that BelAZ and MAZ, the big manufacturers of national trucks and tractors, could not have survived in a market economy.
Sacrificed showcase
“Our industrial jewels are perpetually losing money, are heavily indebted and deepen their technological backwardness,” laments the economist. With industrial wages nearly twice as high for equal qualifications in Poland, the country is experiencing a brain drain. Anxious to have a modern showcase to retain young people, the former collective farm director Lukashenko encouraged the emergence of a local Silicon Valley. Offering well-trained, cheap brains, coupled with tax breaks, Minsk’s Hi-Tech Park has attracted $ 330 million in investment and alone accounted for 4% of GDP.
Alas, the Hi-Tech Park is now nothing more than a field of ruins. His employees having massively protested against the regime, he was ruthlessly beheaded. “Eliminating political threats is not only a priority, it is today the only task of the regime, notes political scientist Artiom Shreibman. If achieving this goal means shattering the image of Hi-Tech Park – pride and joy of the president – so be it. “
While the European Union decided on Friday, June 4 to ban Belarusian companies from accessing its airspace and finalize new economic sanctions against the regime, the prospect of a collapse is unlikely, again because the (geo) politics prime. “Exports to Europe oscillate between 20 and 30% of the total volume. In the event of an embargo, Russia will act as an intermediary to help Belarusian production to flow, estimates economist Sergei Aleksachenko. Putin will not let go. under no circumstances fall Lukashenko, because he does not want the Russians to believe that the sanctions are achieving their goal. The capital injections will continue. ” Will they extinguish the volcano? It’s unlikely.
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