 My name is Paulic Murphy, and I'm glad to welcome you all to the first webinar of the Institute in the new season. It's the Rantree in Dublin, so to speak. I chair the Foreign Policy Group in the Institute for International and European Affairs. And we are very happy and very lucky to have today speak to us the director of the Center for European Reform, Charles Grant, who is in fact a founder of the Center for European Reform, as well as now being its director, and is well known in circles that are concerned with Brexit, with Russia, with China. So we couldn't have a better presenter of the situation as it is today in Belarus than Charles. Charles will speak for 15 to 20 minutes, and the event as a whole, as well as the question and answer session afterwards, on the record. If you have questions, I would urge you to use the question and answer function at the bottom of your screen in order to put your question and to do this during the presentation, so that we have a raft of questions, so to speak, that Charles can deal with as soon as he's speaking. So when you're putting your question, please identify yourself and your affiliation, if that is appropriate. Charles, the floor is yours. You're very welcome again. We look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you very much, Padre. It is a great pleasure to be back, at least virtually, at the institute. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Sorry, my internet's slightly dodgy, but hopefully it'll hold up. Great to be back with you guys. I've lost kind of, it's probably five or six times I've spoken at your institute since the Centre for European Reform was established 22 years ago. It's a great pleasure to be back. First time I've been asked to speak about Belarus, I just explained on a personal note that I first visited Belarus about 15 years ago, and on the sub-screen visit I met the ladies who became my wife, so I do have a close personal interest in Belarus. In fact, my wife has just returned from there with our little boy. I've been there this summer, as I usually go there, and there's some of it, my wife's been there. She's telling me what's going on there. And I'm afraid the headline really is, I don't think it's looking too good for those of us who wish to see a peaceful, democratic reform in Belarus. It's not looking so good. In the long run, who knows what will happen. In the short run, Mr. Lukashenko, who's been in charge for 36 years, looks like staying in charge. What I'm going to do in my remarks today is explain why I think he is, at least in the short term, winning. What is actually going on in terms of the opposition movement, what the nature of the incipient revolution is. I'm going to look at the causes of the current unrest and then a bit about the EU's own role. What, if anything, that you can do to help advance things in the right direction. So firstly, why is Lukashenko winning in the short term? I mean, it's now three or three or more weeks since the elections happened, since the popular protests erupted. The regime is not crumbling. And why he's, it's not crumbling because it is willing to be very brutal. The regime is not splintering. There are no members of the elite breaking off to join the opposition. They are arresting lots of people. They are still torturing people. They are beating up people. That is not succeeding in terrorizing demonstrators into crescents. But it is, does mean that the regime itself is hanging together. I think there's a kind of band of brothers spirit linking together members of the political elite in the security establishment. They think they will sink all of them together and they are very reluctant to talk to the opposition but not talk to the opposition. And they think that as soon as they show a sign of weakness, they're finished. So they're hanging on grimly and knowing that they control the monopoly of the use of force. And so long as they do, there's no reason really why they should, at least in the short term, have to give up power. The nature of the regime in Belarus is actually rather different to that in Russia, which is often compared. In Russia, after the end of the Soviet Union, the main industries were privatized. So you have oligarchs in Russia, potentially alternative centres of power. You don't have oligarchs in Belarus. That's because everything in the state is much more like the Soviet Union than any other bit of the form of the Soviet Union. The big industry is the state owned and they are controlled by friends of Mr. Lukashenko, not oligarchs but friends who are related to keep them loyal. And so there are very few alternative centres of power within the country. Everybody who's anybody in Belarus is somebody who's part of the kind of friends of Lukashenko. And that makes it very hard for the regime to splinter indeed. There's what the Russians call a vertical power. I detect very little sign of members of the elite splintering off and joining the opposition. And essentially, I think the governor of Grodno, a town in the west of the country, has resigned because he's supported the opposition. And some important TV journalists have resigned because they support the opposition. But these are not key people who really matter, unfortunately. The second reason why Lukashenko can relax a little and think he's holding on to power is the way the opposition works. The opposition doesn't have any guns. It doesn't have any organisation. It doesn't have a clear structural leadership, which in some ways is good and in some ways it's bad. It's good because it means it's very hard to kill the opposition off if they arrest a few people as they've done. But still others will jump up to take their place. So the opposition can't be destroyed and we'll go on demonstrating week after week, as far as I can see at the moment. It'll do that. But the bad thing about being a structuralist opposition is there's no mechanism for seizing power and taking control. Very little organisation indeed. This is very grass roots organisation, the opposition. And I think it's the current way it's evolving. I think they're moving towards a sort of philosophy of nonviolent resistance. They hope they can in the long run triumph through nonviolent resistance. Everybody's busy reading up about Gandhi and Ottpor in Serbia and other examples of nonviolent resistance. We all wish them luck. And there's some very, very good people in the opposition. Of course what's been notable is that women have played a huge role in the opposition movement. I can't think of another revolution or quasi revolution where this has been the case. This has helped to maintain it nonviolent, which is very good. So nobody can accuse the opposition of violence or threatening behaviour, which makes it harder for the regime to intervene against them. I mean, the three ladies who led the opposition just in the run-up to the election itself. This is Tikhanovskaya. This is Seth Karla. And this is Koles Nikova, who is representing the Baraka, the third candidate. Really did extremely well. But of those three, only Koles Nikova is now at liberty in the country because this is Tikhanovskaya, as you know, has fled to Lithuania and this is Seth Karla's fled elsewhere. I'm not sure where she is. So that's the opposition. So they've got some good people and good women in particular playing a prominent role, but they don't have a mechanism for seizing control. So control will not pass to the opposition or to anybody new unless some elements of the regime agree to a dialogue with the opposition and they don't have any incentives to do so. And the third reason why Mr Lukashenko relax is Russia. But his relationship with Vladimir Putin is very long-running and very complicated. They do not like each other at all. For very many years, Mr Putin's been trying to persuade Mr Lukashenko to accept the so-called union state. That was an agreement that dates back to 1996 when the two countries agreed to set up a joint union. Subsequently, the Belarusians have stalled on that. Both government and more moderate and democratic forces don't want to be part of Russia or more integrated Russia. They've stalled on that. They have agreed to stay part of the collective security treaty organization, which is the Russian-led equivalent of NATO. And Belarus has been a founding member of the Eurasian Economic Union, which is the Russian-led equivalent to the European Union. It has resisted measures to integrate its currency with the Russian rule, but it's resisted efforts of Russia to push forward more defence cooperation. There is some defence cooperation with two military bases of Russia in Belarus, but the Russians always want to do more and the Belarusians are not so happy about that. Lukashenko gets to be fair to him, has wriggled and squirmed and used every technique he can to avoid Russia's embrace in recent years. One of his techniques has been to play off Russia against the West. So every time he got too close to Russia, he would flirt with the West. He released political prisoners in 2015 so that the EU eliminated the sanctions in 2016 and America reduced its sanctions in 2016. He's played this game, but he's run on a road, not Lukashenko in that respect, because his recent behaviour is so bad from the West's point of view that we will not embrace a more polite game with him. He's really got no alternative to go to Russia, which is bad for Lukashenko's desire to stay out of Russia's clutches, but good for his desire to stay in power, because he needs Russian help, he needs Russia's financial help, Russia's security support. And if he gets that support, he will, he can probably stay in power, at least in the immediate term. But there was Russia has its price, Russia has its price, and Russia does want further integration. I don't claim to know what's going on Mr Putin's head, but I imagine that he would like to push forward the Union's data agenda with a closer relationship, economic and security. He's quite happy to have a weak government in Belarus, because the weaker the government, the more dependent it is on Russian favours. And the Russians do regard Belarus as part of what they call the Rusky Mere, the Russian speaking world. They don't regard it as a foreign country, that's rather like the English don't see Wales as a foreign country, that's not English don't see Ireland as a foreign country, that's another bigger question we won't get into today. But like the English see Wales it's sort of very close but a little bit different, that's how the Russians see Belarus. And the Russians also have a very paranoid view of the West's intentions in Belarus. Russians are saying at the moment that these demonstrations we're seeing are the result of intervention by Lithuania and Polish security forces, which of course is not true. But I think of course it's propaganda as well as paranoia, but I think from my knowledge of Russia some of the Russians actually believe this kind of stuff, where Mr Putin and his friends are so paranoid they don't believe that the Ukrainian revolutions of 2004 and 2014 were anything to do with the Ukrainian people wanting to break free of Russia and run their own affairs, they actually convinced it to see other operatives pushing forward in the general change in Ukraine. They have a similar view of what's happening in Belarus, but they really are wrong. In Ukraine in 2014 there was an anti-Russian element, there was a nationalist element in the revolution of the Maidan brothers. So far that is not the case in Belarus. Most Belarusian people are not anti-Russian, they really are not. They're rather a rosy view of Russia because they watch, a lot of them watch Russian television. They don't even have a particularly negative view of Mr Putin. That's not what this revolution is about. This revolution is not an anti-Russian revolution at all. It is, it's not a nationalist revolution, it's a democracy revolution. It's about rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of press, anti-corruption, getting rid of the man who's been the dictator for 26 years. That's what it's about. And of the people demonstrating, some of them probably would like to make the country more pro-western, others not particularly, others don't mind being close to Russia at all. But that's not, it's very important that the people in the West don't, in my view, give Lukashenko and Putin an excuse for, for, for military intervention by trying to, you know, say let's get Belarus into NATO, even let's get Belarus into the EU. That's not what's, what's on the agenda for now. What I think we in the West should focus on is, is getting, making sure that Belarus, the Belarusian people can choose their own rulers. So, so that's what, sorry to digress slightly, but I think my point is that we saw a couple of days ago Mr Putin said, if Mr Lukashenko needs help, we have a special reserve of security forces who will go and help him. He doesn't really need to do that yet Mr Putin because I think Mr Lukashenko is sadly in control anyway. I think the risks of a Russian invasion of Belarus are very small indeed, because the Russians must have enough intelligence in the sense of security intelligence to know that if they do invade Belarus, then Belarusian people will not be so pro-Russian. If they invade Belarus to snuff out a revolution, then the Belarusian people will turn against the Russians and Russia will lose the good will and support of the people that as it's rather done in Ukraine and Georgia in recent years. So I don't think Russia needs to invade or will invade. If it did invade, it would be very costly in terms of blood, treasure and reputation, because the West would certainly impose very strict sanctions on Russia. But I think probably Mr Putin at records he can get his way without invading just through informal cooperation. There has been a lot of cooperation already between the Russian security services and the Belarusian ones and some of the techniques the Belarusians have used for dealing with the crowds and the demonstrators have clearly been taught by the Russians that a little bit less brutality and more subtlety in the last few days. I mean if I missed to meet Mr Putin, who I have actually met a few times as part of something called the Balzai Club, I would say to him do let Belarus go down the Armenian route. That is surely the best possible model for Belarus's future that could conceivably work, i.e. in 2018 Armenia underwent a sort of democratic revolution and the next bit of Armenia I should hasten to add, but there was a sort of revolution there to kick out a particularly corrupt regime and the new government that came in is more democratic than the one that preceded it, but it has not sought to annoy Russia. It's staying in the CSTO, it's staying the Eurasian Economic Union and it's therefore made quite clear to Russia that it doesn't seek a geopolitical revolution in Armenia's place in the world and therefore the Russians have left it's mode and have not intervened and I hope that in the long run Russia will come to accept an Armenian model for Belarus, it would be great if they did. The trouble is I think that and again I'm speculating, I think the people in the Kremlin probably think that Belarus might have rather more than Armenia, Minsk is a lot closer to Moscow than Yerevan, so I do worry that the Russians won't accept an Armenian model, but that is what I think we have to push them to do and hope that they will do so. So those are the reasons why I'm a little bit pessimistic in the short, at least the short term about what's happening in Belarus, why I think Mr Lukashenko is secure. Let me just move now to a little bit on what why there's been the kind of change that there has been in Belarus, because I think understanding what is changing there is important for me to understand what may happen in the future. One point I'd make is that Mr Lukashenko, as far as I can tell, has been a fairly popular figure for much of the time as he's been running Belarus. It's very hard to be sure because there aren't any really good objective sources of opinion polling, but my own anecdotal experience of what I've read from others who are more expert than me, he has been fairly popular. He was fairly popular because Belarus has been a fairly well-run country. People in Belarus talk of it being a Southern Baltic country and there is a little bit in there. It's quite a clean country, it's quite an efficient country, the state works fairly well. It's fairly well organized, perhaps compared to Ukraine. Now it's actually been a bit less corrupt than Ukraine because there aren't any oligarchs. There is corruption, of course, but it's not not the sort of Ukraine the Russian style of corruption because there aren't oligarchs in Belarus. Sorry, where was I? It's about why he's been popular. There was a sort of social contract, an informal social contract that was operated in Belarus between the regime and the people whereby the regime delivered stability and prosperity and rising living standards, but in return the people accepted they didn't have political freedoms that others had in the West and they just got on with their lives and they were allowed to travel quite easy, easy to travel and so on and that social contract has really been undermined in the last year or two because the economy's not done so well. The Russians have been subsidizing the economy and they reduced their subsidies. The Russians have been giving Belarus very cheap oil which Belarusian industrial companies refine, turn into oil products and sell to the West and that's basically been a lot of the source of the country's prosperity. The Russians removed, in the process of removing gradually the subsidies on the oil. So the veneration economy has taken a modernized economy. It is still very solid, it's still a big focus on tractor production and a lot of heavy industries and making chassis for missile launches and so on. The one good bit of the economy is the IT sector, there is quite an advanced IT sector in Belarus but otherwise there's not much of a modern economy and Mr Lukashenko has refused to privatize industry or modernize the economy because he fears if he does do what the IMF has told him he should do then people will be made off and they'll be political and rest and he'll lose the social base of his support. So the economy is a real worry and a real problem and that's one of the reasons why there is a lot of discontent because living standards have been drifting downwards in the last five years or so of course they're likely to go down further. The second reason why there's so much unrest in Belarus is COVID-19. There's something about strong men that makes them unable to understand the risks involved when a nasty pandemic comes along. I mean Trump and Trump in America, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Lukashenko in Belarus have a lot in common, they didn't take COVID-19 seriously but Lukashenko was actually worse than the other two names I mentioned because he didn't have a lockdown at all, there was no lockdown in Belarus. The only country in Europe apart from Sweden that didn't have a lockdown, maybe one of them, I don't know. And as a result it was much worse than it should have been. The official figures are that Belarus didn't get too badly effective but the official figures are almost searchable, they are certainly wrong, they're certainly underestimating, in fact it may not have been that badly effective compared to say the United Kingdom but nevertheless it was worse effective than the official figures said and people became scared and because the government took no initiative at all and because Mr Lukashenko said if you drink vodka and drive a tractor and go to the sauna you will not get COVID-19. Even people who have supported them for many years thought, hang on this is a bit crazy, people became scared and civil society began to organise and there was a lot of very important sort of civil society groups grew up during the COVID-19 epidemic in the spring to look after people who are at high risk, to look after health workers, to do shopping for all people and so on. So more than ever before in my experience civil society really took off in Belarus in the spring so that was the second reason why there's so much annoyance with the government. And the third reason is the reaction to the brutality of the regime because when the elections approached and the three serious opposition candidates emerged and when they were locked up and the hundreds of thousands of people queued to sign the nomination papers for the opposition candidates, this has never been seen before in Belarus, literally hundreds of thousands queue stretch for mile after mile, they just wanted to sign the nomination papers something was happening, what was happening was people were getting very angry with the regime for being so brutal in the way it was detaining opposition leaders and their entirages and their families and their staffs. So the behaviour of the regime gave a further provocation to civil society to get organised and then subsequently the election itself, the behaviour of the regime is even worse, a lot of people have been beaten up and tortured, people have been murdered by the regime, nobody knows how many, certainly there are 34 deaths, other people just disappeared and have probably been murdered, there may be, there may be several dozen deaths, nobody knows but everybody knows that there's been lots of beatings going on, people have seen happened and this is to provoke people to demonstrate, that's why they've been brave enough to demonstrate day after day, weekend after weekend despite the arrests and the fact that the detentions and the risks they've undergone. So the short one I'm trying to say is even though Lukashenko is in charge for now, the country has changed, the country has changed for the better in many ways, people have woken up, they may not want to join the EU or NATO but they do want democracy and they want to look after themselves and choose their own leaders and they've fed up and they hate this now and they really hate him and they want to go on and at my own estimate is by probably at least three quarters of the people or more wanting to go on and the numbers of people who really still support the regime is rather small, it's those who are linked to security standards, those who probably fear for their futures if the regime falls, it's very closely linked to the regime. Just finally, just a word about the European Union and I'll stop, the EU sadly doesn't have very many levers it can pull, the EU would love to help the opposition but it just doesn't have levers because it doesn't give very much, it only gives a few tens of millions of pounds of aid a year to the country directly which is peanuts. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is very active in the country as is the European Investment Bank and certainly it would cost the country quite a lot if they pulled out but I think the EU isn't in a hurry to pull those institutions out because they believe they do rather lots of good and what they use dilemma is it doesn't want to do things that will hurt the people, it doesn't want to block trade with borders because that would hurt the people, it wants to hurt the regime but not the people, that's difficult. So what it's going to do, what it is doing is targeted sanctions picking out the listed individuals who are guilty of human rights abuse or electoral fraud and having visa sanctions on them so that they cannot travel and bank sanctions so that they cannot have bank accounts in EU countries and this will certainly hurt a bit for the elite because they do like to travel to build this and do their shopping there, they do like to have foreign bank accounts in nice places they can visit but it's not going to change, it's not going to change the behavior of the regime very short and I think that it does take rather a long time for the EU to act, it takes because it's a lot of legal issues to involve, it's going to take the EU a week or two yet before it has its list ready. So I don't think, one thing the EU can and do is hold by the courts, it can hold by its carrots as well as sticks, it can say look if we have a democratic government in the country then we can give you billions of pounds of aid, the EU has the budget to do that, it can do that to help you go through the difficulties of economic reform which you must go through. In fact the Lukashenko regime did ask for the balance of payment support in the spring, the EU said no, it can do that to a more friendly regime, it can offer sticks and counts but the sticks as I'm saying are relatively limited and there is of course better is it's a member of the EU's eastern partnership alongside Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia but it doesn't take up a lot of the programs in that eastern partnership compared to the others and again I think the EU is reluctant to push it out of the eastern partnership for fear about hurting the people themselves but then maybe something that happens, maybe it doesn't make sense to keep Belarus in the EU's eastern partnership given what's actually happening and that's something that you will have to work out in the future. To be fair to the EU it is fairly united on Belarus and it's fairly united in taking measures but what doesn't worry about Hungary because Viktor Orban is a friend of Lukashenko, strong men seem to like each other, he went to Lukashenko to meet him in June and said there shouldn't be any EU sanctions on Belarus but luckily he's kind of kept quiet since then and Hungary has not actually intervened to try and stop sanctions in the last few weeks perhaps because his friends in Poland and the law of justice party Poland are taking a very tough line on Belarus and Hungary has enough fights to pick with the EU anyway, enough fights to fight with the EU or mother issues moment doesn't think Belarus is is worth expending a gunpowder on. To touch wood it's okay for the Hungarians, the Cypriots and the Greeks are potentially difficult because they are so annoyed that the EU is not taking sanctions against Turkey because what's happening in the Eastern Mediterranean at the moment they are threatening to veto sanctions on Belarus, I suspect they won't in the end and anyway the EU may well take action on Turkey so the EU is fairly united, the Germans are very much in the lead, it's the country that takes a strong interest in Belarus, Austria is an interesting country, Austria is the biggest investor in Belarus of the European countries, hasn't tried to prevent sanctions but has huge links, Austrian airlines is big there, Austrian banks are big there and so on, so watch out for Austria, perhaps potentially a problem. So the EU in my view is fair to criticize the EU for being a bit sleepy and a bit slow and not doing more but I'm not sure there's a lot more it can do, whatever it does it has to work with the US, I'm not sure what's happening in the US about Belarus, the US has been trying to improve its ties with Belarus in the last year or two, it's upgrading its ambassadorship in Belarus to full ambassador level, it's even oil supplies to Belarus where the Russians cut them off earlier in the year and I think it frankly isn't, well Mr Trump is not very interested in human rights and I think the State Department would be more interested in the geopolitical game, they're trying to pull Belarus away from Russia. When the elections happened and the fraud became clear, Mr Pompeo the Secretary of State did speak out quite falsely against what was happening in the country, they didn't even work with international partners deciding what to do but there's such a mean nothing has happened, I don't know what's going on in the US but they don't, they're not talking about sanctions at all, the British at least are saying they will join the EU in taking sanctions because the British on the road couldn't do anything so the players as far as I understand will follow whatever the EU does but they have to until the end of this year anyway while they're in the transition period and afterwards they'll probably work with the EU as well but the US, I don't know what's happening, I think I'm coming to the end of my remarks by the way, just let me end, let me just try and sort of put my take at my crystal balls and what's going to happen, I don't actually know what's going to happen of course, I do think as I've said already Mr Lukashenko will remain in charge in the short term but in the long run who knows, still society's a lot stronger than it was, what I fear is that Russia will increase its hold over the country in the short and medium term because Lukashenko so much depends on Russian help, you'll have to give the Russian some of what they want, that'll make Russia a more influential player this is already and that in itself may turn the opposition movement in Belarus from being not anti-Russian to a bit anti-Russian, the more the Russians intervene the more they will turn the people against them, against Russians and ultimately the people of Belarus have to sort out their own affairs but I don't know what's going to happen but I fear it may, things may get worse before they get better, I hope I'll stop there, thank you. Thank you very much Charles, thank you for a very nuanced presentation of a complicated situation in Belarus. As you say in the short term Lukashenko will probably still call the shots but as you also rightly say he is perceived as having run out of road by a large part of his own population and there are a number of reasons for this, the economic one, the pandemic one, the reaction to brutality that you mentioned but perhaps the most important one is that he is in power for 26 years and the position of Belarus in the general European overall situation is not very clear because he has played games for these 26 years between Russia and the West. The question then is as you also raised what does the EU do about it and here it seems to me that something that Charles Bitt has said is very important and in either others have said it too that is we are not doing a geopolitical game in Belarus and of course that reduces the possibilities for us to engage, if the US engaged fully I think it would become a geopolitical game and perhaps we have a lot of reasons to hope that this will not happen. In regard to this kind of dilemma there are a couple of questions one from Alan Dukes, former finance minister here who asks about the role of the OSCE in particular about new elections under the auspices of the OSCE and Toda Quain who is a member of the staff of the institute also asks whether the OSCE might have a role in facilitating matters there. Now of course the OSCE is not in the strongest positions at the moment but nevertheless it does seem to be an organisation that preeminently could deal with this kind of question without raising these geopolitical issues. It's on the OSCE I think that's a very interesting point. Belarus is of course a member of the OSCE though it's not a member of the Council of Europe because it has a death penalty and the Eton Russia are still in the OSCE does mean potentially the OSCE is a more neutral organisation for mediation and say the EU so I think the feeling when I talk to EU diplomats is just saying I think the OSCE is an ideal organisation. I pick up something else you said about Carl Bilt I think it is very very important that we don't play geopolitical games and we don't try and see this as an opportunity to grab Belarus for the West because if we do then the Russians will serve me into being if necessary with military force and that's just the sad and tragic reality but that's why I said before that Carl Bilt has also said the Armenian model is really what we need to aim for. Jupiter is called stability at least for the time being but the democratic processes and rule of law within the country. Something else I didn't mention earlier which I just mentioned very briefly which is the issue of immigration one of the saddest things about what's happening at the moment is a lot of people leaving the country and of course the more that the more that the regime seems to be stable and secure and in control the more people will leave the country and that of course is damaging to the economy because it tends to be the bright young people leaving the country. It's also damaging for the political process because the kind of people who you need to lead an opposition are leaving the country. Immigration is something that worries me greatly quite a lot of it is going up unfortunately. Yeah on that question we have an interesting observation from the Netherlands ambassador here who says he was in Moscow between 2009 2012 and covered Belarus from Warsaw for the subsequent four years and served as eastern partnership ambassador from 2016 and 2018. He says he sees a lot of similarities between the demonstrators in Moscow in 2010 2011 and Minsk now they are young educated and diverse. What people in Moscow and now in Minsk binds is free elections rule of law no corruption no joint further vision and the government reaction then and now he said there's also the same as it gradually die down start the track down in the second phase and thus win. Do you agree? I do I think that may well be the case I think I was a visitor to Moscow at the time of those demonstrations in 2010 to 2012 and I think you know just letting them letting them letting them drift on I think as Putin did Ben and as Lukashenko is doing now is what is what it is also as Putin is doing today Khabarovsk and the Russian Far East I think there's a lot of similarities between what's happening in the Russian Far East and what's happening in Minsk and Putin knows that that's why Putin cannot be seen to allow a color revolution to succeed in in Minsk because if it did think of the impact on other places in Russia thinking that would inspire those in Khabarovsk and elsewhere in Russia to demonstrate themselves. I think if Putin you know have a red line of preventing any kind of successful color revolution in Minsk sadly which is why I come back to the people myself again I think the Armenian model is the only model we can really aim for and aspire to in an ideal world. Yeah well of course the Armenian model involved the change of head of state in Armenia and of course the crooks the government of the problem in Belarus it's precisely the presence of the continuing presence of Lukashenko I suppose it is conceivable that in Moscow they would have other scenarios in mind as far as that is concerned. Yes and I think it is it is because Putin clearly doesn't like Lukashenko that's obvious and most people in Moscow don't like Lukashenko and if it's if I think if at some point he seems to be so weak that he cannot continue in office then they will look for an alternative somebody who is a more client person who would who could have more credibility to the Belarusian people who would be sympathetic to Russia but there isn't such a person at the moment I mean nobody can think who that person would be right now and at one I went perhaps just to add something I said earlier I think about a week ago or maybe two weeks ago it did look like the regime was almost crumbling because the the the state and enterprises went on strike when they went on strike I think this is maybe the end and the a lot of TV journalists walked out and unfortunately they broke the strikes they broke the strikes by arresting the ringleaders and threatening to sack everybody else so the most of the state of enterprises are more or less back at work as far as I know now so that industrial action failed and that's why I think I think it is quite plausible to imagine that that Lukashenko will just wait and wait for the protest to peter out that they may not peter out but of course when the weather gets worse in the autumn that that'll be one one deterrent for more people demonstrating. Yeah well the protest may peter out but as you said Lukashenko also has run out of the road we have a question from Ben Tranra in UCD here who asks what can you tell us about the strategy of the opposition or the next few days weeks or weeks and I think you have said a certain amount about that already in terms of the absence of structure in the opposition and perhaps following the absence of structure the absence of organized tactics but nevertheless it's an interesting question what do you know about that? I can't say much more than I said already I'm afraid and I think as we said there isn't any structure that is both good and bad in different ways there's certainly a very strong focus on non-violence there's a certain very strong focus on sort of civic rights and civic issues and those people in the opposition who are sort of one say it could say old-fashioned nationalists have been pushed aside they are not being allowed to dominate and run things those people who are kind of want to focus on history in the past and great heroes of revolution history the the short-lived republic of 1918 those people have been sidelined those people in charge of the opposition or if there is anybody in charge are much more focused on on civil civil liberties on civic sort of civic issues or not trying to avoid trying to avoid it being a national revolution because they know that if it comes to national revolution and the Russians will be very very quickly involved in a negative sense so I think that that will continue a lot the women's side is very important a lot of a lot of a lot of focus on soft power and kind of women's issues I think that will remain as I said before I think there are a lot of people in Belarus are today buying books about Mahatma Gandhi and reading about octpore in Serbia and the Serbian movement that led to the downfall of Milosevic 20 years ago and they're trying to learn about peaceful resistance non-violent resistance of course non-violent resistance worked in British India because the British didn't didn't bump off Gandhi they locked him up they didn't kill him and I guess non-violent resistance really only works if the regime is is relatively civilized and how civilized Mr. Lukashenko's regime is I just don't know yeah we have a couple of questions um on the reliability of of the EU um one from Valerie Hughes uh courts uh Donald Tusk is saying to Belarus that all the people of Europe and across the world stand with you um and that the same thing was said in 2012 to Syria um those do you think that the EU will sustain its support for Belarus and then Donald Denham uh says that um uh the uh similarly that the rhetoric of the EU is perhaps not enough um and it's further weakened by Brexit and as he asked is Russia once again to be the beneficiary of the present disruption in Belarus uh a wise man that could answer that kind of question but it is a dilemma that people see well that's all those are all very fair and very good points to make um I think there is a danger of course with the EU foreign policy machine that its rhetoric runs ahead of reality and it brover promises and delivers that's why I've always said on Belarus we should be very modest about what we in the EU and I say we need to live in a country that's left the EU but we in the EU can achieve this be very modest because we shouldn't we shouldn't lead anybody in Belarus or elsewhere to think that we can we can change history easily or quickly or simply it's just not life isn't it's not easy unfortunately foreign policy life isn't that easy I think what we can do is nudge in nudge in certain directions by um by creating in sticks but it's incentive structure through sticks and carrots but I do think uh the EU is about overdone the strategic caution because it got burnt in in in Ukraine I mean in Ukraine the EU took a lot of stick for charging in with the association agreement without realizing how the Russians would react and then provoking the the events of 2014 and the Russian intervention which actually is is is not fair or it's not a true record what happened I followed this very closely at the time in fact the EU did try and warn the Russians about the uh deep and comprehensive free trade agreement that it was wanted to do with Ukraine but every EU summit there was over a period of several years the EU told us to Putin about it he wasn't interested he didn't care about it it was boring then just in just in 2013 somebody said to Putin hang on Ukraine can't join the Eurasian Economic Union if it does this trade deal with the EU then Putin said hang on what we've got to stop that so Putin got very angry and tried to stop the DCFTA between the EU and Ukraine in 2014 so I'm digressing but that's because but they're trying to nevertheless a lot of people including Boris Johnson blamed the EU at the time for the what happened in Ukraine might be very unfairly but because of that the EU is very worried about provoking a Russian intervention in Belarus so when I talk to EU officials they say to me of course you know we want to help the people there but we if we if we give them too much help we're into being too strongly then that'll give uh that'll give Lukashenko and his regime no option but to go cap in hand to the Russians and do some sort of deal give get money and help from the Russians in return for giving up sovereignty and we do want and a European objective is to maintain the sovereignty and integrity of the Belarusian state as an independent state so the EU is is understandably reluctant to provoke a Russian intervention but I think they overdo it I think of course you have to think about the consequences of what you do and of course you have to be careful and cautious but ultimately the EU is an institution based on values and if the EU betrays its values by forgetting about its support for democracy and human rights in Belarus then it's not going to not only would it not be popular with the people of Belarus it'll lose popularity with its own people inside the European Union because ultimately if the EU is not a values-based organization it is nothing those values have to be tempered by a bit of realism but they have to they have to be maintained those values so I think the EU needs to be a bit more open a bit more active and move a bit quicker and and be prepared to do a bit more and being under any illusion that it has the ability to actually click his fingers and say that Belarus will be democratic. Yeah and I suppose there is a question of the born child trading the fire because in the case of Ukraine geopolitical considerations were very definitely in play and there is a sense in in Brussels and in the EU that the geopolitical play was mishandled perhaps and hence the perhaps excessive caution in Belarus. I have another couple of questions somebody asks whether if the Belarus security services lose power or if we draw their support to Lukashenko will we see the arrival of little green men I think perhaps you have answered that whatever that is there is also the question from John Kerr will we see the nomenclature of speaking as it has in Armenia that's also something and then there is a question from somebody Paul Johnston asking could NATO and the EU make it more clear that publicly and privately that all this talk of NATO mobilizing is nonsense three questions which you may find interesting to answer. On the last one I think I think it's of course Mr Lukashenko is saying that NATO is mobilizing that NATO troops are approaching the southwest border of the country which is not really true. I mean NATO does do exercise at some time but there's nothing happening because of the current crisis more than would happen anyway. I think NATO perhaps could say a bit more forcefully than nothing is happening. I think I'd be happy if NATO said a bit more forcefully and you know we know nobody NATO is ever talking about Belarus joining NATO which is true but it's really not on the agenda for the people in Belarus at the moment no being Belarus in taking on a demonstration saying let's join NATO it really isn't on the agenda but it would suit Lukashenko very well if people in the west start talking about joining NATO with some people in Washington and in Texas Washington start talking about Belarus joining NATO that would give them an excuse to intervene and to get more more paranoid and to campaign more. So I think it's very important to say that to try and do everything we can to make it quite clear that NATO is not interested in Belarus at the moment. European Union I think you know similarly that nobody really wants Belarus to join the join the EU in the foreseeable future. You should never say never because European countries do have the right to join the EU. You shouldn't say never but you can say not not for the time being. On the on the on the point about the Russians sending in little green men I think well they have sent in some already they've certainly the head of the Russian KGB so FSB rather has been being Belarus at least at least on two times in the last week or two and I think there's a lot of technical practical organisational support going on already that the Russians are helping the Belarusian authorities with already but if the secret if the Belarusian secret services were to stop supporting Lukashenko then I think the Russians would quite likely intervene but on the other question was about the signs of the nomenclature is that it's but at the moment no the people in the nomenclature want to hold on to their jobs their money their privileges their public position their swanky cars their dachas and they do not want to start talking to the opposition because if they do they could be killed or locked up and they lose their privileged privileged life and they're betting on Lukashenko surviving for another few years after he survived for 26 years why couldn't he survive for another four or five years and tell his son he's old enough to take over we haven't talked about the family but but Lukashenko's son Collier is 15 it goes everywhere with him and this seems to be being groomed for the replacement you know right in North Korean style but I think Lukashenko wants to go on and tell Collier he's old enough to take over but that'll be some time unfortunately he goes he goes everywhere with him and is often seen and was seen as a child in a military uniform and I think it was seen also in the past week in the military uniform another question which is a very interesting one from Toda Quinn who is a researcher there and that is about Emmanuel Macron Emmanuel Macron has over the past couple of years pursued a policy of keeping a channel open to President Putin and he has talked about Russia rejoining the G7 G8 she wonders what the effect of the events in Belarus might be on this and indeed I would add one could also ask what the effect of the events in relation to Navalny in the past week have on this I think Emmanuel Macron must be furiously thinking again that's an interesting question you raised exactly a year since he came up with the idea that we should try and find a way of building bridges to Russia his main motivation was due strategic he was worried about Russia being too close to China and he's worried about China and the West and doesn't thought we maybe we could sort of grab Russia and put it away from China and make it close to the West my own view is somebody's followed Russia for a number of years I think there's no harm in trying to see if Russia is ready to behave in what we regard as more civilized way no harm in trying and sounding out the Russians see if they're ready to make changes that would be required for a close relationship but it's clearly as Macron's discovered it hasn't worked to be fair to Macron you always said that a better relationship with the West requires Russia to try and promote peace in Ukraine you know Macron always said that and Russia is for as far as I can see very unwilling to make the compromises required that would get peace going in Ukraine which isn't to say that Russia is to blame for everything in Ukraine and then the Ukrainian government doesn't make compromises either I think Russia is a big part of the problem in Ukraine and I think already that the lack of progress in Ukraine the lack of Russia's willingness to really go for a solution in Ukraine is more or less Macron's initiative has sort of pitted out already before the Belarus events happened and I guess events in Belarus haven't really changed that very much one way or the other Macron to be fair has spoken quite strongly on Belarus he both he and Angela Merkel have said to Putin you must not intervene and if you intervene you'll pay a price which is exactly what the West should say to the Russian leadership but I don't think as for Navalny I guess Navalny only shows sadly to those people the cynical about Russia's capability that Russia isn't the nature of the regime is not likely to change anytime soon which makes it Macron's understandable desire to improve relations with Russia isn't going to go very far anytime soon and I think the Macron initiative is perhaps pittering out without having achieved anything at all yeah thank you if you permit Charles there are a number of questions on on brexit and you are also and if I miss you so I agree completely with what you said a week ago that what we were heading for was a bare bones agreement but that there would be one at the end at the end is coming very near and of course there have been alarms and excursions in the intervening period which make one wonder again but John Bruton who is a former bishop and former U.M. ambassador to Washington asks how do you think the level playing field issue can be resolved in the EU UK free trade area negotiations I'm happy to switch to a few questions on brexit if that's what you want to talk about I have been saying for all summary that I thought a deal is more likely the low deal I guess things keep on happening that make me question my assumptions there is still time for a deal we don't need to do a deal till for another six weeks or so even a bit longer if necessary six or eight weeks a deal will require the UK government to compromise in certain areas it also required the EU to compromise a bit too I think taking standing back and taking the big picture whether UK really needs to compromise on state aid state aid regime is the most important blockage to progress now the British government does not want to propose any state aid regime post transition period at all and that is obviously not acceptable to the EU nor should it be acceptable to the EU my guess is if the UK proposes a regime that has some sort of independent regulator that is fairly serious it doesn't it wouldn't wouldn't need to follow EU rules exactly at all but it needs to have a serious system of controlling say that I think that would be enough for the EU but the Dominic Cummings the Prime Minister's most important advisor is is opposed ideologically to any kind of restriction on state aid at all the the irony is Britain of course is much less state aid than any other large member state of the EU compared to France and Germany and Italy we use very little state aid but we want the right to use it and Cummings wants the right to subsidize a lot of new high tech innovative industries that the sort he's very concerned about and I think Cummings is going to have to be overruled Cummings is not overruled on the state of this you know and I think we're heading for no deal if he is overruled there could well be a deal I think where the EU has to move a bit it's just the so-called parallelism the EU saying and it won't talk about anything else until state aid is sorted out and fish are sorted out I think state aid perhaps we do have to move on but British have to move but fish will won't be done to the last minute anyway fish is the most physically difficult issue in the entire Brexit negotiations will have to be done right at the end on the question about level playing for more generally I think the solution is quite clear that the British have to promise not to not to go backwards in their standards on social environmental issues and some other areas and the EU has to leave will have the right to punish the UK if it does go backwards and of course putting that into practice is very difficult I think I think level playing for the overall is solvable it's just the state aid issue is particularly difficult and I don't think it's the most difficult issue of all so whether there can be a deal depends on whether it can be stated the reason why I'm optimistic in the sense of I think that a fin deal rather no deal at all is I think the British government really need and this is being objective and not based on gloss it from number today I just think objectively there is a real question mark about Boris Johnson's competence and the competence of his whole government because of the way they've handled COVID-19 because of the way they've handled the council schools exam fiasco and if if at the end of the year we leave without a deal there will be chaos at the borders there will be gaps on supermarket shelves and interruptions to supplies of key pharmaceuticals of all sorts of problems and some people will say it's all being used for but some people won't say it's not being useful because actually Boris Johnson's fault and I think he doesn't want to take it further not because representation for competence and then the Scottish issue I mean if you know if I was Nicola Sturgeon I'd be very happy if there's a no deal Brexit because then that will just create more doubts about whether Scotland is better off staying in the United Kingdom read by led by a little incompetence you can't even do do a Brexit deal with the EU so I do think that the Scottish factor the competence factor make me think that objectively the government wants a deal I think Michael Gove certainly wants a deal he's an important player David Frost and Boris Johnson I think want to deal on their terms and I think Cummings probably doesn't want to deal so I think this is going to split amongst the people that's that's where I am with Brexit yeah thank you very much and of course we couldn't agree with what you see I would just add that there is also as well as the question of competence which you mentioned there is a an overall question of trust which is an important one and I think there is a perception widely in the EU that the political agreement was not faithfully what shall I say taken into account I think we can all understand that negotiating tactics can mean that you try to increase leverage by not making any concessions until the very last minute but when that involves a panel in this regard of a political agreement which has arrived at before these negotiations start it has consequences which I think none of us welcome when we look at the overall position of Britain and the EU in the future I think that's right and I think I know that talking to your governments that the the fact that the British government's kind of gone back on some of what it promised in the political declaration last October it has certainly undermined trust in it I would say that on at least on the issue of the Northern Ireland protocol there was the big issue of trust because the Prime Minister and his ministers were saying until the spring of this year well maybe we won't have to have any controls on goods crossing the Irish Sea and that would obviously go completely against what they promised in not just the political declaration but actually in the withdrawal agreement itself but to be fair to the British government I mean when Michael Gove took control of that dossier in the spring he made it quite clear that we would implement British would implement the Northern Ireland protocol there will be controls on goods going across the Irish Sea so that I think is as you know if they hadn't done that then the trust issue would have been catastrophic I think having done that it's still as you rightly say a big issue the fact on the political declaration the British have changed their minds they no longer want a close structure cooperation on foreign policy in defence as they promised they would in the political declaration for example and on the structure of the DLA they said they wouldn't want to accept an overarching governance for the whole system they went against that but now they've changed their mind on that and that's one concession the British have made recently they've now accepted the the Greek temple model with a set of pillars for each agreement linked by common system of governance so I think I think the trust issue it is important but ultimately this is what matters most of all is the substance and on the substance I suppose you're going to have to make some compromises to get to do and I'm not I think they probably will but I can't promise that they will yeah with us we reach the end of our encounter today I'd like to thank you very much I think I sense from a lot of people that I've been in touch with and indeed my own personal experience there is a lot of positive feeling towards Belarus among people that know Belarus and Belarusians and it's the case in spades for yourself but I personally could join in that too and it would be particularly regret regrettable if things go to the kind of extremes that the potential is there for them to do but we'd like to thank you for being with us today for your very comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of what is going on in Belarus and around Belarus and as a little bonus at the end for giving us your thoughts also on breakfast brexit thank you on behalf of the institutes and all the participants well thank you guys make one concluding comment on Belarus since I'm glad that I'm very glad that you're having a seminar on Belarus it is an important country it's 10 million people not so far from the EU at all borders three EU countries it is an important country and while I think as I said before we have to recognise the European Union it has limited numbers of leave as it can pull it nevertheless it must stay strong and united and committed to its values and the European countries are important to the EU has to stand by those values and stand by the people of Belarus thank you very much Charles