A Belarusian minister dies. Poisoning is provoked in Kyiv

by Lorenzo Cremonesi

Makei (stranger) suddenly disappeared. Moscow: a shock. Relations with Putin, the no to sending soldiers, is Lukashenko also in danger?

From our correspondent
BUCHA – That Vladimir Putin’s position on the Moscow throne is much more fragile now than it was before the invasion of Ukraine nine months ago is a well-known fact. The failure of his army to counter the determined will of the Ukrainian people to resist, as well as the apparent superiority of the weapons supplied by NATO, have drawn criticism from even his closest allies. It is therefore not surprising that now even the countries linked to Moscow by treaties on military cooperation have concerns and doubts about the stability of these relations. Ukraine is fighting back militarily, and has now compared the “war crimes” committed by the Russians, including recent attacks on civilian infrastructure, to the Holodomor: the Great Famine caused by Stalinist repression in the early 1930s. Yesterday, the 90th anniversary of this event celebrated in Kyiv met with solidarity from a large part of the international community. And in this regard, the dubious reactions that accompanied yesterday’s news of the sudden death of 64-year-old Foreign Minister of Belarus Vladimir Makei are linked to President Alexander Lukashenko.

The meeting that won’t happen

Makei died while staying in Yerevan for the work of the Collective Security Treaty Organization conference, which brings together the former Soviet countries allied with Russia. He was due to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tomorrow. Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately expressed her condolences to her government (“We are shocked”).

The Minister and the Tsar

But it is the contextualization of the news that the minister’s death becomes a litmus test of political and military tensions in the Russian camp. Makei had been Lukashenko’s chief of staff until his appointment as Minsk foreign minister in 2012 and had staunchly supported the alliance with Putin. However, over the years he had tried to open up to the European Union. It was only at the time of the 2020 presidential elections, when the Belarusian people took to the streets to demonstrate against the fraud and to demand Lukashenko’s resignation, that Makei sided with the dictator and asked Putin to send soldiers and armored cars to defeat the to quell riots. Then, in the fall of 2021, when the tsar asked Belarus to guarantee the entry of Russian units and missiles into its territory, Makei gave Lukashenko the green light, but insisted that Minsk would not send any soldiers of its own.

suspected poisoning

Since then, Putin has been demanding that Belarus enter the war to open a new front along the Polish border. But Lukashenko seems to be fighting back. Was Makei then poisoned by Putin’s agent to send a warning to the boss? Along those lines, Anton Gerashechenko, a well-known adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, tweeted that he raised “suspicions” of drunkenness and stressed that the minister was one of the few who “could withstand the pressure from Moscow.” A few hours before the news of his death, the Ukrainian media resumed claims by the American research center Robert Lansing that Putin could eliminate or intimidate Lukashenko himself.

November 26, 2022 (Change November 26, 2022 | 23:45)