Dr. Muhammad Akram Zaheer
The seismic shifts in Ukraine following the Euromaidan Revolution and the 2014 election of a pro-Western government fundamentally altered the nation’s geopolitical trajectory. Declaring European Union and NATO integration as its paramount objectives, Ukraine decisively pivoted away from Russia. This dramatic reorientation logically suggested an inevitable cooling in relations with Belarus, a state traditionally aligned with Moscow and under the enduring authoritarian rule of Alexander Lukashenko. Yet, contrary to expectations, Ukraine embarked on a policy of sustained, even strategic, engagement with Minsk. This approach, predicated on a critical misreading of Belarusian sovereignty, ultimately proved a costly failure, culminating in Belarus’s complicity in the 2022 invasion.
Prior to 2014, under President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainian-Belarusian relations existed within a framework of gradual convergence with Russia. Despite nominal pro-European rhetoric, Yanukovych’s policies fostered deeper ties with both Moscow and Minsk, making strong bilateral cooperation appear a natural extension of Kyiv’s overall orientation. The Euromaidan upheaval shattered this dynamic. Ukraine’s new leadership unequivocally rejected Russia’s sphere of influence, embracing Western structures instead. This created a profound divergence: Ukraine sought security and integration with the West, while Belarus remained entrenched within Russian-led frameworks like the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the deeply integrating Union State.
Despite this starkly diverging path, Ukraine’s post-Maidan leadership made a conscious choice not to isolate Lukashenko. Instead, they elevated Minsk to a central role in regional diplomacy, most notably as the venue for the Minsk Agreements aimed at resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas. This decision served multiple purposes for Kyiv. Firstly, Minsk was perceived as a neutral location acceptable to all parties involved, including Russia and the OSCE. Secondly, and more strategically, Ukraine sought to leverage this engagement to pull Lukashenko away from Moscow’s orbit. By offering Belarus a platform for international relevance and fostering bilateral economic ties, Kyiv hoped to cultivate a degree of Belarusian independence beneficial to Ukraine.
This engagement yielded immediate, albeit superficial, benefits for Lukashenko. Hosting high-stakes negotiations provided a veneer of international legitimacy and became a crucial tool in his efforts to emerge from the isolation imposed by the West due to his regime’s human rights record. Improved dialogue with Kyiv facilitated tentative outreach to the EU and even the US. For Ukraine, the logic was multi-layered. Beyond the practicalities of a negotiation venue, Kyiv aimed to bind Belarus economically, creating mutual dependencies that would deter Minsk from hostile actions. Preserving existing economic benefits – trade, transit, joint ventures – was a significant motivator. This explains Kyiv’s notable reluctance, even after the brutal crackdown on Belarusian protesters in 2020, to fully align with Western sectoral sanctions against Belarus, seeking to insulate bilateral economic cooperation from broader geopolitical condemnation.
However, this strategy rested on a fundamental and ultimately catastrophic miscalculation: the overestimation of Alexander Lukashenko’s genuine independence from Russia. Ukrainian policy treated Lukashenko as a pragmatic, albeit authoritarian, leader capable of balancing between Moscow and the West to preserve his own power and Belarusian sovereignty. This perception was dangerously divorced from reality. By 2014, and indeed much earlier, Belarus was already deeply enmeshed within Russia’s political, economic, and military structures. Membership in the CIS, EAEU, CSTO, and the Union State represented not just formal alliances, but profound integration. Belarus’s economy was critically dependent on Russian energy subsidies and market access. Its military doctrine and capabilities were inextricably linked to Russia’s, with deep interoperability.
The events of 2020 laid bare the true nature of Lukashenko’s dependency. The Kremlin’s overt political backing and alleged involvement of Russian security “consultants” in suppressing protests demonstrated unequivocally that Lukashenko’s political survival hinged on Vladimir Putin’s support, not on maintaining distance from Moscow. His regime was a client state, its stability purchased with loyalty to the Kremlin. Despite this stark revelation, Ukraine persisted with its engagement strategy, albeit in a diminished form, clinging to the hope of economic leverage and the Minsk negotiation format.
The brutal culmination of this failed policy arrived on February 24, 2022. Belarus, far from acting as a neutral buffer or a state restrained by economic ties to Ukraine, actively facilitated the Russian invasion. Its territory served as a crucial launchpad for Russian troops and missiles attacking Kyiv and northern Ukraine, transforming Belarus from a problematic partner into a direct co-aggressor. This act irrevocably shattered any illusions about Minsk’s capacity or willingness to pursue an independent course contrary to Moscow’s dictates. The war laid bare the utter ineffectiveness of eight years of Ukrainian policy towards Lukashenko.
The core systemic error was evident from the outset: Ukraine fundamentally misjudged the nature of the Belarusian state. It treated Belarus as a genuinely sovereign actor capable of strategic neutrality, rather than recognizing it as a de facto Russian vassal, deeply integrated and subordinate within Moscow’s imperial project. Given the ongoing Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas since 2014, Ukraine should have adopted a far more cautious and realistic approach. The minimal prudent stance would have been to treat Belarus unequivocally as an ally of the aggressor state, adjusting all political and economic relations accordingly, minimizing dependencies, and anticipating potential threats from Belarusian territory. Instead, the pursuit of a “Minsk mirage” the belief that engagement could foster Belarusian neutrality blinded Kyiv to the hard reality of Belarus’s subordination to Russia, leading to a profound strategic failure with devastating consequences. The war has now forced a complete reassessment, with Ukraine recognizing Belarus not as a neutral neighbor, but as occupied territory instrumentalized by the Kremlin. The lessons of this miscalculation resonate far beyond their bilateral relationship, underscoring the peril of underestimating the depth of authoritarian dependencies within Russia’s sphere.
