Dmitro Litvin: Lukashenka Really Got To His Citizens, Putin And European Union

Nobody needs him.

The main trouble for Lukashenka at this election is that nobody needs him.

He has got system competitors - who do not scare away the majority of Belarusians. Until recently mainly the national democrats were the bane of his existence, and here - bam! - the people themselves, as if Lukashenka 2.0. Babaryka or Tsepkala are such personalities who will not scare off a conditional pensioner with their rhetoric, politicized image or dissident biography, on the contrary - they will even calm down with their absolute normality.

On the other hand, Lukashenka obviously did not expect that some blogger's wife could become a unifying figure for the opposition through the idea that she (the blogger's wife) does not need power at all - she needs functionality to hold new fair presidential elections and return the old constitution. At the same time, although Lukashenka's rivals consider the sovereignty of Belarus to be the main value - no one will concede it there - they will remain in the usual and consensual framework: it is necessary to cooperate with Russia, Europe, and China as well, none of them will go for an ideological break with the Kremlin.

Any way you look at it, all this destroys Lukashenka's position. What could be his special meaning to get another term? None whatsoever. He really got to everybody.To his citizens, Putin, and the European Union - as one can judge by the close attention in Germany to the dark side of Lukashenka's rule.

So Lukashenko has no chance to get clear away. His society does not need him, the Kremlin does not need him, and we live not in the Europe where some political weird trick will allow the dictator to escape from the East to the West - these are not the times of the Cold War. And what is most interesting is that he is aware of this uselessness and is very worried about it. Where else to do? There's no way out. Everything depends not on him now, but on the Belarusians themselves.

Dimitro Litvin, Facebook