Word: lukashenko
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...Physically and psychologically, the town is stuck in a strange twilight between the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union and the modern European Union. In Minsk, the capital 250 miles away, the government retains the sheen of its totalitarian past. In 2006, Aleksandr Lukashenko, a Soviet-era official who claims to have been the only member of the Belarus legislature to vote against the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, was elected to his third term as president. With his command of 84% of the vote and a tight leash on opposition parties, he has good reason to expect that he will...
...world's second largest energy company and supplies a quarter of Europe's natural gas--and 100% of Belarus'. Medvedev's remark hit home for his fellow hockey buff and adversary--the forward who had tripped him up so uncouthly, also known as the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. On a tense New Year's Eve night a week earlier, Medvedev forced Lukashenko to accept a price hike that more than doubled the cost of natural gas, from $46 to $100 per 1,000 cu m. To save his economy from collapse, Lukashenko caved, after having dug in his heels...
...Over New Year's, Russia forced Belarus to pay a whopping increase in gas prices; Belarus retaliated by stealing oil from the pipeline. But Putin's bile may have origins other than the current quarrel over the price of energy. In the 1990s, Lukashenko, although the president of another country, was immensely popular in Russia because he loudly advocated the reintegration of Belarus with Russia - so much so that some analysts believed he was maneuvering for the top position at the Kremlin itself. At that time, Lukashenko cut a much more attractive figure than then Russian President Boris Yeltsin...
...Lukashenko has since dragged his feet at re-federation, and Belarus now fears that the Russians will simply go ahead and find a way to end its independence. That fear may itself be fueled by Russian paranoia about national security, which is never far from the surface. While recent threats to the Russian state have come from Islamist radicals, Moscow's military elite still harbors apprehensions about NATO. An attack by the Western alliance and the U.S. always plays a part in defense planning. And how is Belarus involved in Russia's fear of NATO? For about 10 years...
...presides over a moribund economy, Lukashenko has taken to guerrilla tactics to survive, brazenly ordering his officials to take Russian oil from the pipeline. He knows that Belarus alone cannot stand up to the Russian behemoth, much less pay for energy prices Moscow has imposed on it. However, Lukashenko is betting that when countries like Poland and Germany feel his pain, Moscow will begin to feel the heat...