Putin will try to compensate for defeat in Ukraine at expense of Belarus – Belarusian political scientist Usov

The head of the Center for Political Analysis and Forecasting shared his opinion on Espreso TV.

"There is no rationality in the Kremlin's minds now, there is a "take what you can get" approach. What they could take from Ukraine, they took, and the question is whether they can keep it. We are all looking forward to the next few months and have high hopes for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I think that Putin will not limit himself to some standards for maintaining the illusion of Belarus' independence and legitimacy. If there is a need to strengthen his status and image by expanding the borders of the Russian empire, he will do it. The only question is in what format this will happen, whether it will be in the format of a union state. We see that in South Ossetia, they also wanted to hold a referendum on the accession of this unrecognised republic to Russia, and the local elites were against it. A new president came there and said that they would not hold such things. They can't even include Transnistria in Russia, even though a referendum was held there much longer ago. Now all this may change," said the Belarusian political scientist.

Pavel Usov added that Putin will not think whether Belarusians and Lukashenko will be satisfied or not.

"Again, the question here is: how long will it take, a year or two, because in three years there will be no dissatisfied people in Belarus, Lukashenko will “clean up” the country. And then it will be possible to do anything with Belarus. The process of Russia's absorption of Belarus may be accelerated by Russia's defeat in Ukraine. There will be a counteroffensive, which, unfortunately, will not go beyond Ukraine. Most likely, Russia will remain for some time in the format it has now. All the losses will be compensated by the defragmentation of Belarus, i.e. at the cost of Belarus, Putin will try to compensate for the dissatisfaction of the jingos in Russia," Usov said.

• On April 6, self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the implementation of the union state project.

• On April 10, Lukashenko demands security guarantees for Belarus at a meeting with Shoigu