Belarus: Elections

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the possibility of joining forces with the governments of (1) France, (2) Germany, and (3) the United States of America to persuade the government of Russia that it is in its interest to push for new elections in Belarus.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to introduce this debate, which is overdue. By way of background, all my political life—in fact, all my life—I have been involved in some aspect or other of foreign affairs. I include in that a short time in a very junior position in the Foreign Office, 25 years in the European Parliament and, since I came into this House, my time as a member of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, so I have a reasonable amount of experience. During that time, I have visited Belarus on a couple of occasions and Moscow on more than a couple, most recently in December 2019 using the facilities made available by this House to pay for visits to members of the Council of Europe. There, I met a number of members of the Duma and the upper house.

Belarus is, of course, the only country that is not a member of the Council of Europe. This is largely because of its refusal to suspend the death penalty but that also seems to have become rather convenient, because it has placed Belarus in a position where few queries are ever raised as to its policies et cetera. The election that took place some time ago, however, gave rise to a lot of controversy.

Let me say at the beginning that I am indebted to the Chatham House unit, which has supplied me with opinion polls and other data, as well as to Dr Mikalaj Packajeu and Dr Alan Flowers, who provided me with a briefing around the subject of this debate. I am sure everyone will notice that is not condemnatory; I am looking for a way through the woods here.

The first question is: why should we listen to Russia? I like to think I am a pragmatic person, and one good reason to listen to Russia is that it is the next-door power and it, frankly, has its own version of the Monroe doctrine. In the last few days, the United States has been gleefully celebrating its misplaced policy of 60 years in Cuba. It could have achieved what it has now much more quickly, had it been more flexible. Russia similarly regards the countries on its border as those in which they want, at least, to keep powers not hostile to them. That is one of the difficulties with Belarus.

Another factor about Belarus that we must face up to is that no fewer than 79% of the population has either a positive or a very positive attitude towards Russia. Some 58% think that Russia should stay neutral in the present dispute but—according to a poll provided by Chatham House, not an internal poll of Belarus’s people—32% of the population of Belarus support a union with Russia. Some 46% would like to be united to both the EU and Russia. But one sees from this no outright rejection of the big neighbour next door, and we need to bear that in mind when tackling this problem.

The Lukashenko regime is undoubtedly unpopular, and on a very wide basis. One of the results of this will certainly be what has happened in other former Soviet countries—an increasing brain drain. Repressive countries lose the best of their middle class, and this has been demonstrated time and again. I live in Cambridge and it is full of people from other parts of Europe who are the cream of their societies and have chosen to leave to live in what they rightly see is a free society. The first danger for Belarus is that it will lose its population by people just leaving the country.

The election in Belarus was not wholly supported in Russia. The day after, 9 August 2020, Foreign Minister Lavrov said that the election circumstances “were not ideal”. For a Russian, that is a strong statement. When the main leader of the opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, met Macron, she called on Vladimir Putin

“to play a constructive role in the crisis resolution.”

This is the key: if there is to be a resolution there, we need Russia on board. At the moment, for Russia, Belarus is dependable, even if not particularly savoury. It is rather like the old American phrase, “He may be a something, but he’s our something”. We have to make it possible for the people of Belarus to change their Government. Crucial to this is whether the Russians can be persuaded to treat Lukashenko in the same way they treated Yanukovych—in other words, to give him a way out of Belarus, because he is not going to leave voluntarily.

The next thing that I think is important is that if he is replaced at the helm, it has to be with a Government who will be pragmatic in their approach to Russia. This is where the gist of my resolution comes in because the big powers, so to speak, of Europe, which are France and Germany, I hope with the assistance of Britain and the United States, must put their work behind an optimal solution. This must be accompanied by a strong message to go to the Belarusians.

I know that in June the IMF board discussed a proposal for a historic $650 billion general allocation of special drawing rights. Some of that, roughly $1 billion, is due to go to Belarus, and this will be voted on early in August. I think, following a precedent in 2019 when the IMF denied Nicolás Maduro access to $400 million of special drawing rights on the grounds that the international community did not recognise him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, the IMF should not decline, but should freeze for the time being that allocation of special drawing rights. I have signed, together with a number of other Members, a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer asking him to look at Britain taking that position within the IMF. In other words, in looking to change the regime in Belarus, we have to be firm as well as fair. We cannot be soft, but at the same time we must not indulge ourselves in some sort of hate fest, and we certainly have to realise that, unless we can bring Russia on board, we are very unlikely to succeed.

Lukashenko has become a very toxic ally for Moscow. He is not popular there, and I was told when I was in Moscow that the chemistry between him and Putin is absolutely awful, but at the same time, he is the only leader the Russians have—he is their only dog in this fight—so we, as responsible western nations, have to make it possible to construct a solution where we can get a regime change in Belarus that is acceptable to the Russians. I suggest we ask the Russians to help with an exit strategy for Lukashenko, and I hope the Foreign Office will work with its colleagues in Europe and Washington to form a common position which can lead us to a desired result.