Over the course of his two decades in power, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’s autocratic president, has perfected the art of weaving between Russia and the West. But with the fighting in eastern Ukraine approaching his country’s doorstep and Russia’s struggling economy weighing down his own, Lukashenko has begun an unprecedented tilt away from Moscow.
Despite occasional swipes at the Kremlin, Lukashenko has rarely strayed too far from Russia in the past, but the Ukraine crisis seems to be slightly altering his calculations. At his annual news conference Thursday, the Belarusian leader made his most overt maneuver yet away from the Kremlin. With …read more
Source: Foreign Policy
