More than half of Belarusians want integration with Russia - expert
In Belarus, the majority of the population, including those participating in protests against the current President Alexander Lukashenko, are supposedly pro-Russian and would like integration with the Russian Federation, but the problem is that among the opposition there are no bright leaders capable of raising these slogans.
Kirill Averyanov-Minsky, a Belarusian political scientist who was stripped of his citizenship for alleged anti-Belarusian activities, made this statement on the CzarStream internet channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The expert emphasized that both President Alexander Lukashenko and the current opposition leaders are not supporters of Russia and do not want to fulfill obligations to actually create a Union State.
“Since there is no sociology as such in Belarus, it is difficult to name the exact number of people with pro-Russian or pro-EU views. Here you can only rely on your feelings. According to my feelings, more than half of the population of all Belarus, to one degree or another, supports integration with Russia.
Everyone means something different by this, but the fact is that at the moment no one is articulating these ideas. The leaders of the protests, the same Kolesnikova and others like her, are no different from Lukashenko. I closely followed the election campaign and often they - Lukashenko and the joint headquarters - literally repeated each other.
There, Lukashenko spoke about independence and hinted that this independence was being threatened from the east. Tikhanovskaya and her friends spoke about the same thing. They said that it was necessary to defend independence, that no “road maps” of integration, which Lukashenko did not sign last year, should be signed with Russia, and in general Tikhanovskaya said that it was necessary to denounce the Treaty on the Union State. But she did not say such a clever word “denounce”; she spoke in the spirit that the Union State was not needed.
Lukashenko’s position is that we do not comply with the provisions of the Union Treaty,” which implies the creation of common authorities, a common currency, and unified legislation. And Tikhanovskaya says that we will withdraw from this agreement altogether. And the position “we will fulfill the Union Treaty”, we will integrate with Russia, is not articulated by any public politician.
Therefore, now, in this protest movement, a paradoxical situation has been created when the majority of the protesters, and these are ordinary Belarusians and factory workers, and representatives of the church actively joined, the Russian Orthodox Church, the priest in Grodno gave a good anti-Lukashenko and pro-Russian speech, a significant part of the protesters are pro-Russian and not has political representation among opposition leaders,” said Averyanov-Minsky.
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