Are Belarus-Russia Relations At The Brink?

Kremlin.ru

Artyom Shraibman, Moscow Times: War of Words Pushes Belarus-Russia Relations to the Brink

Is this the end of the “brotherly trust?"

In just one month, Belarus and Russia have gone from a three-day amicable meeting between their presidents in Sochi to a new flare-up in tensions. The Belarussian Foreign Ministry has accused the Russian ambassador in Minsk, Mikhail Babich, of manufacturing artificial figures in his interviews, and of being unable to distinguish an independent state from a Russian federal district, prompting a similarly outraged response from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Right from the start of the current dispute between Belarus and Russia, there was no obvious compromise, and this set it apart from previous arguments between the two countries, in which it was always possible to agree on a figure somewhere in between Belarussian requirements and Russian resources for friendship.

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WNU Editor: I for one am still surprised that Belarussian President Lukashenko has remianed in power. He is an authoritarian who does not tolerate dissent, and he is in power only because of his security apparatus, the state bureaucracy, and indifference from the Kremlin. As for Russian - Belarusian ties, they are changing. Belarus has benefited from cheap Russian oil and general trade for years, and the Kremlin has made the decision that this must stopped. What Belarus will do after that is anyone's guess.