On Aug. 11, 2020, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy declared that the Aug. 9 Belarus presidential election was “neither free nor fair” and “credible reports of domestic observers show that the electoral process did not meet the international standards expected of” a participating state of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
By contrast, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already congratulated his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, for the announced outcome of the presidential elections in Belarus. That is not surprising considering how Putin clings to power in Russia.
Russian agency TASS reported that in his congratulatory note that Putin stated: “I expect that your statesmanship will facilitate the further development of mutually beneficial Russian-Belarusian relations in all spheres, as well as the further enhancement of cooperation within the Union State, the strengthening of integration processes within the Eurasian Economic Union and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and of military-political ties within the Collective Security Treaty Organization.”
The current political turmoil in Belarus will make it increasingly tempting for the Russian president to reach out for those geopolitical goals – with or without Lukashenko – which would further endanger security and stability in Europe.
Thus, the international community needs to be proactive during these challenging times for democracy to ensure that the will of the people of Belarus, a European country, be respected and not subjected to tyranny and oppression from within or abroad.
At this critical time, leaders of Western democracies must stand firm with the people of Belarus as they exercise the fundamental rights guaranteed to all people under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and take appropriate measures against those responsible for violations of the presidential electoral process, brutal crackdown against protestors and politically motivated arrests.
Eugene Czolij is president of the Ukraine-2050 nongovernmental organization and served as president of the Ukrainian World Congress President from 2008-2018. Ukraine-2050 is a non-profit organization established to help implement strategies for the sustainable development of Ukraine as a fully independent, territorially integral, democratic, reformed, and economically competitive European state.
