The saddest thing for Lukashenka is that Putin’s adventure is clearly failing. His vaunted army is stuck in a foreign land, faced with heroic and, moreover, very skillful resistance, and is suffering huge losses. The Western world has imposed unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, not forgetting Belarus as an accomplice in aggression, writes political observer Aliaksandr Klaskouski.

Lukashenka said in early February that the war with Ukraine, if it starts, will last three to four days. He probably did not believe until the last moment in a large-scale invasion or counted on a blitzkrieg, which he would skim off as an ally of the Kremlin.

The reality turned out to be different. Today it is already obvious that Minsk will not receive any dividends from complicity in the war, but, to put it mildly, will get a whole load of trouble. And it’s already raking: the Belarusian ruble has sharply devalued, banks have had big problems (some, like Russian ones, are disconnected from SWIFT), production facilities that have been hit by sanctions have begun to stop. People began to scatter essential goods from store shelves. Anti-war sentiments dominate even among a fair portion of Lukashenka’s solid electorate.

And if he also sends Belarusian soldiers into the Ukrainian meat grinder (on which, as many observers believe, Putin insists or may insist), society will boil over. Yes, and the soldiers may begin to surrender, so as not to shoot at the Ukrainians. Therefore, Lukashenka gets out in every possible way, insists that his army needs to cover the western border, otherwise the insidious NATO members will stab the Russian brothers in arms in the back.

How long this excuse will last, one can only guess. In any case, it is already obvious that the Belarusian ruler has bet on the wrong card. Two anachronistic regimes have challenged the developed world, and if there is no third world war, they will certainly lose this confrontation historically.