State-run TV in Belarus has broadcast a three-part documentary which accused democracy foundations of bank-rolling the country’s opposition and sponsoring a coup d’état, RFE/RL reports. The program claimed that “Belarusian militants” are being trained by activists from earlier color revolutions at camps in the Ukraine sponsored by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI).
”It is totally false,” former NDI Director Nelson Ledsky told RFE/RL. “The National Democratic Institute has nothing to do with it, has no training camps in Ukraine or in Belarus, and has not participated in any activities of the kind.” The regime also claims that the International Republican Institute is sponsoring subversive activities in Belarus.
The government appears to be engaging in what Belarusian analyst Vitali Silitski calls “pre-emptive authoritarianism“, trying to portray the opposition as foreign agents in the run-up to elections scheduled for September 28. This ruse is not unprecedented. Prior to the 2005 presidential elections in Belarus, Russia’s FSB security services helpfully exposed a Western conspiracy to finance opposition groups through unspecified terrorist organizations in a telling manifestation of the informal “authoritarian international” at work.
Authoritarian regimes are becoming more pro-active and assertive, frequently collaborating through groups like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in trying to pre-empt and defuse pressures for democratic opening, particularly in the run-up to elections.
But relations between Moscow and Minsk are increasingly rocky rather than rosy, according to analysis from the Pontis Foundation and Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. Observers detect a below-the-radar tug-of-war between Russia and the European Union as both try to court President Alexander Lukashenka.
The European Union’s dual approach – attempting to work with technocratic modernizers inside the regime while increasing opposition contacts and exerting diplomatic pressure on human rights – signally failed, analysts Balázs Jarábik and Alastair Rabagliati have argued, as the Lukashenka regime became more authoritarian.
Yet there remains a strong moral imperative for engaging, rather than isolating Lukashenka, argues RFE/RL analyst Luke Allnutt, highlighting the battle of ideas in the region. “Whereas the West, trumpeting the virtues of civil society, democracy and the rule of law, once was seen as a beacon,” he notes, “now Russia, with its message of criminal capitalism, misuse of state resources and gross rights violations, is increasingly becoming a working model for many of its neighbors.”
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