How and why the West finances the opposition in Belarus
Recently, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the opposition political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) will have to pay a fine of 402 euros due to the fact that the campaigns of two of its members in regional elections were allegedly sponsored from Switzerland.
This news is not surprising for the “civilized world”, since in the Euro-Atlantic community righteous anger and indignation are caused by any facts of external influence on internal political processes.
Their morals.
In recent years, the West has constantly accused Russia of this kind of interference, and although there is no serious evidence, even rumors and potential risks nearly cost US President Donald Trump his seat . In some "democratic countries," someone can be ousted from office and, indeed, from respectable political life simply for unauthorized communication with foreigners, as happened to former Lithuanian Seimas Deputy Speaker Mindaugas Bastys , who dared to fail to report his contacts with representatives of the Rosatom company.
It happens that loyalty to foreign countries is even equated with espionage, and oppositionists in EU countries sit for years waiting for the intelligence services to scrape together some kind of invoice to bring charges.
For example, the leader of the Polish Smena party, Mateusz Piskorski , who advocated for a review of the results of the privatization of state-owned enterprises carried out in the 90s, as well as for Poland's withdrawal from NATO, was detained by the Polish National Security Agency back in May 2016 and remains in custody while the intelligence services are reviewing a list of countries (China, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, etc.) for which the opposition leader can be charged with espionage.
A similar fate befell the former leader of the Socialist Popular Front, Algirdas Paleckis , in December 2018 , who, according to Lithuanian state security, was collecting information for Russia.
Naturally, five months later, Paleckis has still not been charged. The politician remains in pretrial detention, and there are serious doubts that the case will even reach trial. Another episode from the life of "democratic Latvia": Yuri Alekseyev, editor-in-chief of the largest Russian-language socio-political portal, "Imhoclub," was first accused of illegal arms and ammunition trafficking, then of pedophilia. Now, when all these cases have predictably fallen apart, Latvian police have opened proceedings under the article "assistance to a foreign state in carrying out actions directed against the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, state authority, or state structure."
That is, in the “countries of developed capitalism” they not only harshly press their social activists, politicians and journalists for connections with foreign powers, but even “pull out” very specific criminal charges to put pressure on undesirable persons and clean up the political field. Why do they pull? Because no sane special service, not to mention the intelligence services of such superpowers as Russia and China, will use oppositionists and dissidents, who are constantly in sight, to collect restricted information or gain access to classified data.
In this case, we can only talk about promoting certain interests and values, that is, about what the West itself is happy to do all over the world, however, as we see, what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the Ox. The absolutely normal practice of democratic Germany, not to mention the very specific methods of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, if it were applied in Russia or Belarus, would inevitably cause hysteria, a wave of negativity and a scandal on the topic of “infringement of democracy.”
How and why does the West interfere in internal political processes in Belarus?
For example, let’s look at the Belarusian political field and the activities of just two North American foundations, IRI and NDI, which have never hidden the fact that they “support Belarusian democratic activists” and “political parties.” In general, the history of interaction between North American special services and Belarusian nationalists dates back to the 50s of the last century, when US CIA employees actively searched for former Hitler collaborators to identify promising agents and personnel for the future information war against the USSR, but at the present stage it most fully reflects American policy Congressional resolution of May 3, 2003, which requires "support for market transformation and integration into the transatlantic community of nations."
Essentially, this is about imposing a liberal market economic model on Belarus and using external influence to change the geopolitical choices of official Minsk . It should be noted that back in 2004, US President George W. Bush signed the Belarus Democracy Act, which imposed sanctions and unprecedented pressure on the Belarusian state, a pressure that continues to this day, with intermittent periods of thaw.
Implementing its own strategy of civilizational confrontation, the West, led by the United States, has effectively supported the Belarusian political opposition financially and diplomatically since the mid-90s. Its main goal for a long time was to overthrow the constitutional order by organizing large-scale street protests. According to several researchers , Belarus's recent history has witnessed at least six attempts at "color revolutions," mostly timed to coincide with important domestic political events such as presidential or legislative elections, in 1996, 1999, 2001, 2006, 2010, and 2011.
At the same time, the coordinating role in organizing the activities of Belarusian radicals was assigned to American non-profit foundations, whose offices, following the expulsion of the Soros Foundation from Belarus, were established in Vilnius, Kyiv, and Warsaw. Moreover, the functionaries of these foundations are not at all embarrassed by their role as puppeteers and are even proud of their achievements. For example, the website of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) states that "the foundation has been implementing democracy promotion programs in Belarus since 2000" and "supports political parties, independent public opinion research, and election observation."
The official website of the International Republican Institute (IRI) contains even more revelations, such as, for example, a speech by Stephen B. Nix, the regional director of programs in Eurasia , to representatives of the European People's Party, in which the functionary openly spoke about how, back in 2001, IRI and other foundations "united political parties and non-governmental organizations that share the common goal of creating a democratic Belarus."
Mr. Nix further described how in 2004, under the skillful leadership of the Americans, the “Five Plus” coalition appeared in Belarus, which was later transformed into the “United Democratic Forces” for the 2006 presidential elections. Separately, it is necessary to reflect that at that time Nix and other American specialists mistakenly thought that “Russia’s strong economic pressure on the Lukashenko regime in connection with rising energy prices, along with the ongoing and increasing political and diplomatic pressure from the European Union and individual member countries, indicates the opportunity to accelerate democratic transition in Belarus.”
Here it is necessary to especially pay attention to the fact that the contradictions between the allies, both now and then, are perceived by opponents of the Belarusian state and Russia as a “window of opportunity” to achieve their goals.
Currently, seven of the 15 officially registered Belarusian political parties have a clearly oppositional stance, align their activities with Western countries, and receive funding from abroad. Currently, it is difficult to calculate using open sources how much Western countries have invested in "supporting Belarusian democracy," but it is clear that over the 25 years of "fighting Lukashenko's regime," opposition parties have absorbed hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign "aid."
Moreover, in September 2018, Belarusian liberal analyst Alexei Pikulik and Swedish researcher Sophie Bedford published a study titled " The Aid Paradox: Strengthening Belarusian Non-Democracy Through Democracy Promotion ," which concluded that foreign aid is contributing to the strengthening of the "Lukashenko regime." The study cites data showing that for the 2010 presidential election alone, the opposition received approximately $15 million from abroad, and that constant foreign funding led to the development of "grant addiction" among beneficiaries.
At the same time, the authors contrast ineffective investments in the opposition with “investment in the promotion of civil society” (“civil society promotion”), which, in principle, has been implemented by the West in the Belarusian direction over the past 7 years. Already in the 2015 presidential elections, professional oppositionists received only “to support their pants,” that is, about $500 thousand, and the main objects of attention of foreign donors were “non-governmental organizations” and “independent media.”
For some time, the West abandoned a frontal attack on the Belarusian state, preferring transformation to revolution; street fighters and tribunes were no longer needed, they were replaced by respectable “lobbyists” and “influencers”, whose task is to penetrate the state apparatus, its decomposition and creating the ground for subsequent internal “changes”. However, this is a topic for a separate publication...
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