 Good afternoon to everyone and welcome to this IEA webinar from Dublin. We're delighted to be joined today by Dr. Anice Marin, a researcher at the University of Warsaw and an associate fellow with Chatham House, who is an expert on Belarus. I'll introduce Dr. Marin in a moment. She will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so, and we will then go to a question and answer session with our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen, and you can send in your questions throughout the session as they occur to you, and we will come to them or at least to as many as possible in the time that we have once Dr. Marin has finished her presentation. Both today's presentation and the Q&A are on the record. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IEA. Dr. Anice Marin is a French political scientist who specializes in international relations, eurasian, and border studies. For the past decade, her main research focus has been on Belarus, Belarusian, domestic and foreign policies, first as an expert with the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, and then as Mary Currie fellow with Collegium Givitas in Warsaw, where she conducted comparative research on diplomacy as a tool for authoritarian regime survival in post-Soviet Eurasia. Since 2018, she has affiliated with the Center for French Culture at the University of Warsaw, where she pilots a project on Russia's sharp power. Dr. Marin is an associate fellow at Chatham House working on its Russia and Eurasia program. So over to you, Dr. Marin, to address us on the topic of Belarus in the new European disorder, challenges for the EU. Floor is yours. Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you for the invitation. Russia's attack on Ukraine, which has shaken the world order, creates a security challenge for the EU, among others due to the risk of escalation. As we know, any border incident could drag NATO into the conflict and result in World War II, World War III, sorry. This new European disorder is multifaceted. The war has caused the refugee crisis, energy crisis, looming global food crisis. It is also a trust crisis because the war is also one of world visions and governance models, and subsequently of competing narratives. And we see that disinformation plays a great role as part of a wider set of so-called reflexive control measures that Russia is an expert in. Belarus, which is a close political and military life, Russia plays a pivotal role in this setting. Yet I believe that due to a number of factors which I'll try to highlight today, there is a possibility to turn this challenge into an opportunity for the EU. I'm saying that the Republic of Belarus has played an enabling role in Russia's unjustified and provoked aggression against Ukraine. Hence, it is labeled as a co-aggressor, and legitimately so. I would like to stress, however, that is not a co-belligerence. There are no Belarusian boots on the ground, except those of volunteers who joined the Ukrainian side in fact. The main argument is that while the Lukashenko regime should be seen as an accomplice in this crime, and face the consequences of it up to criminal liability, it is important to try and decouple Belarus from Russia, and especially the Belarusian people from its leadership. In fact, one Belarus itself is being occupied. A process of soft annexation has been going on for a couple of years, resulting in a deeper integration with Russia, which has led Belarus to almost abandon its sovereignty over the past years. This is the line of argument adopted by the Belarusian opposition in exile, which immediately contested the legitimacy of Lukashenko's support for Russia's war, since he is not himself a legitimate president. Since 2020, his last contested re-election in the 9th of August, but even we could say since 1999 when he unduly stayed in power after a constitutional coup. Second, we cannot exclude that Belarus could lose its sovereignty altogether and its subjugation may well be one of the Kremlin's objectives in today's war. This would shake even more the European security order, adding over 1000 kilometers of direct land border between Russia and NATO countries, Poland and Lithuania, which Russia considers as hostile, unlike Finland, for example. And three, the current limbo exacerbates a very long lasting dilemma for the West, that sanctions against the Lukashenko regime push Belarus further into Russia's embrace. However, I believe it also offers the EU an opportunity to overcome it and solve its Belarus problem in the process. This Belarus problem in a nutshell is that formally Belarus chose formal neutrality, it's inscripted in the 1994 constitution. For lack of better because as a resource less transit country sandwiched between Russia and the EU, and because of its historical aversion for war, which is a heritage of World War II, Belarus has tried to to be seen as neutral. However, it is highly dependent on Russia for its economic survival and security, and also given that it's autocratic leaders priority is regime survival. So Lukashenko over the past two decades has engaged in what was called the balancing act of on the one side blackmailing Russia and bargaining with the West. So as to maintain the status quo and his personal power, and this geopolitical shopping has been balancing also EU policy towards Belarus for many years. The blackmailing meant pretending to agree to deeper integration with Russia, meaning signing treaties that it never implemented. Well at the same time threatening to lean westwards in order to get more subsidies from from Russia, usually in the forms of hydrocarbons at discount prices, military equipment meant to help Belarus defend the western flank of the Union State. And all this opportunistic tactic meant to raise the bidding of his fleeting loyalty. The bargaining side of this geopolitical shopping is was in relation with the West trying to trade off the political prisoners that Mr Lukashenko keeps jailing and promising reforms that were never implemented. To maintain an easing or a lifting of sanctions, which have been imposed on his regime, more or less constantly since 1996. So the goal was to try and convince the West to accept his regime as it is always reminding that the more isolated it would be from the West the more vulnerable it would be to Russian appetites. This is what I called dictaplomatic tactics. This had a disastrous effect on the coherence of the EU's Eastern neighborhood policies because most of the strategy relied on building on internal EU divisions. For example, after Georgia, after the Georgian Russian War of 2008, Belarus was invited to join the Eastern partnership, even though it did not meet the democratic conditionality standards. After the annexation of Crimea, sanctions were lifted in 2015 2016, even though there had been no genuine progress towards democracy. Those political prisoners who were liberated at the time as a sign of goodwill had already served most of their sentence in jail. And the fact that two opposition candidates entered parliament in 2016 had very little impact given that the parliament has almost no power in Belarus. So the challenge in my view is for the EU to try and make its own policy towards Belarus more coherent. These sanctions were reinstated in August 2020 in response to electoral fraud and repression. New packages were added after the Ryanair incident on 23rd of May last year. And following the hybrid attack, so was it labeled by Poland of Belarus against the EU when it's engineered a migrant crisis at EU borders. In this blackmail, the neutrality of Belarus or situation neutrality plays a key role. Constitutionally, this was the case, but Belarus has bandwagoned into several Russia led security alliances such as the CSTO, but also and more importantly in the Union State which has a strong military and defense component. However, Belarus refused monetary union and declined, well, resisted Russia's claims for opening military bases, notably an air base on its territory. But since his last contested reelection in August 2020 Lukashenko has had no choice but to make to put in the very concessions that he had successfully withheld previously and accept this deeper integration. As a result in February 2022 we can say that the situation neutrality has ended. Snap joint exercises named Union Resolve were being held from 10th to 20th of February with massive presence of Russian troops. And Belarus arguably asked Russians to stay after the exercises after the end of the drills, due to heightened security threats, Lukashenko's rhetoric was that Belarus needed Russian protection against the risk of an aggression from Ukraine. His country played an enabling role in the attack. Russian troops from there moved to take Chernobyl and try and encircle Kiev in the first days of the war. Belarusian territory has served as an outpost for Russian airstrikes and fighter jets have been taking off from military and even civilian airfields in Belarus and in the first six weeks of the war, at least 600 missile launches took places from Belarusian territory, hitting military and civilian targets in Ukraine. And finally, Belarus served as a support back base for supplies extraction of Ukrainian war prisoners of wounded Russian soldiers who are treated in Belarusian hospitals for training there are supposedly mercenary training centers in the southern part of Belarus for the for the Ukrainian for the Russian side. And it even supported the looting process by shipping to Russia, the from the Belarusian post those goods that were looted in in Ukraine. But the rest the support to the Russian aggression is also visible in other dimensions. We had lights that three days after the start of the war on 27th of February, Belarus held a constitutional referendum, which included amending article 18 which previously read that Belarus sets the goal of making its territory a nuclear free zone and its state a neutral one. This article was deleted and replaced by Belarus excludes that the military aggression from its territory be launched against other states and as we know this has been violated. Even before the new constitution was adopted. There are other articles that were added in the constitution on ideology which seemed to be also a concession to to Mr Putin personally, and his Russian world ideology based on the celebration of the great patriotic war of, for example, a new article reads that the manifestation of patriotism and the preservation of the historical memory of the heroic past of the Belarusian people is the duty of every citizen of the Republic of Belarus. And Belarus also plays a role in this disinformation war. And it is imperative that Russia is conducting military operation to denounce if I Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian regime is a puppet in the hands of Washington that NATO intended to expand to to Ukraine and with this co responsible for the launch of the war. In the UN finally, that was voted against the UN, the General Assembly resolutions alongside for other countries, notably the resolution of second of March, entitled aggression against Ukraine, which contains a paragraph in which the General Assembly, I quote deplores the involvement of Belarus in this unlawful use of force against Ukraine, and cause upon it to abide by instant national obligations that the resolution was adopted nonetheless with a historical 141 majority votes, while only 35 countries abstain, including China. The notion is based on the definition of aggression international law contained in the 1974 resolution which stated that the use of armed forces of one state which are within the territory of another state with the agreement of the receiving state is in fact an act of aggression as well. And therefore, Belarus has been targeted by sanctions for this complicity in the crime of aggression symbolic sanctions. Belarus was banned from Eurovision and from all major international sports competitions. It's been de facto suspended from the WTO accession process talks hundreds of companies and services have stopped or restricted operations in Belarus. And the EU adopted new packages of targeted sanctions against the Belarusian regime. This had a positive effect in the sense that it probably deterred Lukashenko from crossing the red line and sending troops to fight Russia's war against Ukrainians. But Russia is as usual expecting more from its Belarusian ally. In fact, if the role that Belarus could play is twofold from an operational strategic point of view the Belarusian army is already seen as part of the Russian armed forces, where it could play a strategic role would be to the north or to the south. And the true presence in Belarus is critical for if Russia considered bridging the Suvauki gap, which is this land corridor between Poland and Lithuania which separates Belarus from Kaliningrad it's 90 kilometers or so corridor that was identified by NATO several years as a highly vulnerable terrain, because it is relevant to the scenario in which Russia would attack the Baltic states, either by conventional means or by a fifth column methods as it did in Crimean Donbas. And if Russia was to take control of this strip of land it could isolate the Baltic states from the rest of NATO. This scenario has gone less likely of course especially after Finland and Sweden are due to join NATO. And second should Russia wish to expand control over to Moldova, it could use again Belarusian territory as a springboard to connect with Transnistria over Ukrainian territory. Again, this is all the vision that that Russia has for Belarus's role in its war. The reality on the ground seems to indicate that it is quite unlikely at least for the time being. But why does Belarus refrain from stepping up its support to Russia's war. First, I think that Lukashenko contended that Russia is not winning it and that the war is dragging on he even said it, officially in an interview. So he doesn't really want to join a sinking boat, being all too aware that he too could end up in the hay. Because it would mean the end of Belarus's formal sovereignty which he is not ready to give up just yet, because his army would de facto fight under Russian command. He knows also that his army is under trained under staffed and under equipped, it has no combat experience. It would suffer heavy human and equipment losses, as well as a high risk of defection. And defection is always a problem in Belarus and in fact since February hundreds of young men have fled the country for fear of mass mobilization and being forced to fight against Ukrainians. Both he and Putin know that there is a high risk of Belarusian soldiers actually shifting sides and joining Ukrainian armed forces or territorial defense. And in general, Lukashenko knows that it's army lacks motivation to fight, and especially against Ukrainians which are seen as a brotherly nation, with which Belarus has an interest in keeping good neighborly relations. So he's walking a thin line here. Moreover, he's aware that public opinion is in majority against the war. According to Chatham house surveys. There is a continuous decline in support for Russia for the notion of Belarusian Belarus Russia integration, and for the war in Ukraine. Before the war 56% of those polled, considered that Belarus should remain neutral in the conflict and 80% were against the Russian conscripts taking part in it. The following months it appeared that only 16% approved of letting Russia use Belarus territory against Ukraine, and 3% that Belarusian troops would engage in the war. Moreover, there is evidence that many volunteers have joined the Ukrainian side that were dissidents who actually had fled to Ukraine over the past years, and joined and formed a Kalinovsky battalion. As well as as Belarusians from all over the world who came to Ukraine to fight against Russians. There are also sabotage operations against railway connectors to slow down Russian supply chains for the war. Many of these trade unionists and workers from the Belarusian warways were arrested and they are being treated as terrorists. And I can only but stress that two days ago the criminal code of Belarus has been amended to expand the application of death penalty to those intending or planning to commit a terrorist act. I believe though that it will have a deterrence effect and will not be implemented because the goal is mostly to ensure that Russia does not take care of the saboteurs itself. How to break the deadlock? Of course Belarus is trying. Lukashenko is trying to break it and there are signs that the regime is trying to mend the burnt bridges with the West by reaching out to Western partners, not to the EU as such, only selected member states actually received a letter that was leaked to the press, arguing for dialogue to be resumed, sanctions to be lifted, etc. He's obviously trying to sell in a positive light the fact that Belarus did not formally join the war and that it could contribute even to peace talks and indeed in early stages, negotiations were held on Belarusian soil but they have moved to Istanbul and been stalled since then as we know. This courting strategy has very little appeal among Western diplomats who consider that he lost all agency and that he has little to offer in exchange, especially no guarantees that if he manages to push Russian troops out of his territory they won't return overnight. And especially as he keeps asking Russia to leave behind the military equipment that he has been begging for for ages as 400 missiles. Moreover, there are way too many political prisoners nowadays over to 1000 and no chance to undo the repression that has been set stepped up in Belarus over the past two years. At this stage, loosening the screws liberating these prisoners would undermine his position in domestically and amounts to cutting the branch he is sitting on, which is one of repression. It should be reminded that Lukashenko is not even considered as legitimate president by many countries, France, the US Lithuania several others have no more ambassador in Minsk because they refuse to present their credentials to Lukashenko. And when they even do so nobody would today would would want to talk with Mr Lukashenko and they will certainly not call him Mr President. So in conclusion, what to do, as usual, what can we do. The EU is in a deadlock too because, even if it did not recognize Lukashenko as president and considers him as an interpreter instead, instead. It did not formally recognize his challenger and the current leader of the opposition in exile as president elect. It would be a delicate, delicate step to take at this stage recognizes Mrs Tchanovsky as president. Given that one cannot at the same time consider election results as falsified without tangible proofs because they were actually no OSCE observers to monitor the vote in 2020. And at the same time proclaim a participant in these elections as a winner. There are presidents, however, and we have seen in the case of Venezuela, for example. And the EU, among others, has given at least the symbolic recognition to Mrs Tchanovsky inviting her, or she's been touring the world and meeting in less than two years way more than Mr Lukashenko ever did in his position as president for 26 years. But the issue of Belarus having a government in exile is not new and in fact the radar which was established in 1918 is the longest living case in the world of a government in exile. So, I believe that if Putin lost the war and had to retreat. That could give a renewed impetus to the domestic opposition inside Belarus proper, even inside the bureaucracy inside the military, prompting a palace of military coup. And in the context of economic collapse which Russia will not avoid anyway. There could be a critical mass of protesters inside Belarus to raise up against Lukashenko because he did not protect them from this war and from the sanctions and the economic consequences that they will bear for for simple citizens. Of course, this could only be achieved and this could only achieve positive change in Belarus regime change I mean, if at the same time there is a stronger carrier of sovereignty outside of the country, encapsulated in this government of in exile around Mrs Tchanovsky. In other words, when the time is ripe and this will mostly depend on the course of the war on the ground, and whether Russia indeed collapse military or economically, which is still far from certain. The EU should consider taking strong steps in the form of recognizing this government in exile and one option at this stage already is to grant the status of citizens of free Belarus to the hundreds of thousands of Belarusians who have been in forced exile for almost two years now as a result of repression in the country. So after this, probably a bit provocative conclusion, I end here and welcome questions. Thank you.