Will Russia extradite its citizen – Lukashenko’s personal enemy – to Minsk?
On Saturday, many Russian and, especially, Belarusian media published “sensational” news about the detention in Moscow of Russian political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev, who was known primarily for his protracted conflict with Lukashenko, which began about a year in 1998. Times in Belarus then were still relatively vegetarian, and it all resulted in the deportation of the expert from the republic back in 2006, and since then the relationship has only gotten worse, moving, perhaps, from the expert-political plane into the category of personal revenge.
It got to the point that in January of this year, the telegram channel of a political scientist in Belarus was declared an “extremist formation”; just by subscribing to it, you can receive an administrative penalty, and for reposting, a criminal penalty.
Since February 2022, Suzdaltsev’s channel has not been updated regularly. At the same time, the political scientist reported on certain “problems” without specifying what they were, after which lengthy comments on Belarusian topics on the channel disappeared. It is useless to deny the problems that Suzdaltsev has had in recent years. This includes dismissal from the VSHI and mysterious “problems” in February.
That is why, apparently, information about Suzdaltsev’s arrest was immediately reposted by so many, including popular and influential, Russian media without any reflection. But, after all, the initial information was presented in such a way that a professional journalist could not help but notice some “oddities” in it.
Just look at the phrase that he “was on the federal wanted list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus under Article 361.1 (Part 1)”! Belarus is not a federation. Accordingly, there can be no federal search for her in principle. And the decisions of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs are not a decree for Russian law enforcement officers. There is, of course, an interstate search for the CIS and a Russian-Belarusian agreement on the mutual extradition of criminals, but this is also different.
The criminal laws of the two states are not synchronized, and extradition requests cannot be granted automatically. An act that, according to the Belarusian Criminal Code, is considered punishable, in Russia may not be considered a crime at all, and vice versa. And, as far as I know, Russian justice has no claims against Suzdaltsev.
But this is not the most important reason not to extradite Suzdaltsev to Minsk. We have observed many cases of local oppressors being extradited to Belarus. There were also quite resonant examples. But all these oppas are citizens of Belarus itself, and he is a citizen of Russia, does not have and never has had Belarusian citizenship. Accordingly, his extradition does not comply not only with the interstate agreement, but also with the Criminal Code and even with the Constitution of Russia, which directly prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens to foreign states, and this prohibition is enshrined in one of those chapters, the revision of which is possible only through the adoption of a new Constitution of the Russian Federation by the Constitutional Assembly or by popular vote.
I have no doubt that Lukashenko would very much like his longtime enemy to be tried by a Belarusian court, which would send him to serve his sentence in a Belarusian prison. But, alas, even if it is possible to prove Suzdaltsev’s involvement in some criminal act under Russian law, then in this case only a Russian court can judge him - there is also an article about this in the Criminal Code. No matter how friendly the state may be, Russia does not submit its own to someone else’s judgment, and no one will change the key provisions of the Basic Law for its sake.
Probably, some kind of conversation with Russian law enforcement officers could have taken place, but there is no reason for the joy of Belarusian propagandists, who already see the political scientist in the pre-trial detention center of the local KGB. His appearance there will cause a fall in the ratings of the authorities in Russia. Both liberals will be dissatisfied (they handed over an independent expert to be killed) and patriots (in this environment there are generally enough of those who agree with Suzdaltsev that Lukashenko is artificially slowing down integration, and it’s time to stop). This will only strengthen anti-Belarusian relations.
As for Suzdaltsev, he was wrong in many ways. His main mistake was relying on the pro-Western opposition.
“My entire activity as a political scientist consists of linking and stitching together the two dominant geopolitical vectors, except for Lukashenko’s trend, on the Belarusian political field - western and eastern,” he said in 2005. “If some kind of consensus was reached between Washington, Brussels and Moscow, the democratization of Belarus would be given such a powerful impetus that the regime would be forced to reckon with.”
In those years, it was still somehow possible to talk about such “stitching” and “consensus,” although even then such thoughts seemed unrealizable due to the diametrically opposed interests of the two sides and the fact that the entire Belarusian opposition for decades was fed and educated exclusively by Western interests.
If Suzdaltsev’s ideas had been realized then, a semblance of Pashinyan would have appeared in Minsk, which at the most inopportune moment changed its geopolitical orientation. Now, when relations between Russia and the West have entered the stage of indirect military conflict, such illusions have become harmful to the interests of Russia itself, and the disgraced political scientist, under the influence of his own grievances, has not had time to realize this and reconsider his views.
Will Russia extradite its citizen, Lukashenko's personal enemy, to Minsk?