ALexandr Lukashenko is dependent on the Russian President to remain in power in Belarus. But he’s also adept at exposing and capitalizing on Vladimir Putin’s weaknesses. At 68, Lukashenko is two years younger than his Moscow counterpart, but has ruled since 1994, a good six years longer than Putin. On Wednesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (ODKB) summit in Yerevan provided Lukashenko with another demonstration.
The Minsk ruler described the plans of the Belarusian presidency in the defense alliance in the coming year. At the end of the speech, Lukashenko said that recently “the mass media have been circulating the thesis that the life and fate of ODKB depend on the operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine: ‘If Russia wins, ODKB will live. If, God forbid, it doesn’t win, the ODKB will not exist.’ In our countries, too, many hotheads have started talking about this problem,” Lukashenko said to the group, which is dominated by autocrats like himself. “I feel we have come to a unanimous view that if – God forbid – Russia collapses, our place is among that rubble.”