October 08, 2015•Update: October 09, 2015
MINSK, Belarus
Moscow’s ambition to establish a military air base in Belarus may lead to serious problems, Belarusian experts warn.
Moscow has recently been pressuring Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to acquiescence to its air base demand, according to Arseniy Svitsky, director of the Belarusian Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Research.
But Svitskiy warned that such a base in Belarus would bring in vexed issues in the country's foreign politics.
"By raising the issue to the agenda at such an inconvenient time for Lukashenko, Russia wants to damage the impartiality of Belarus; block the country's normalization process with the west; hamper consolidation of our strategic partnership with China and draw us into a new Cold War," he said.
He said that Minsk had managed to begin normalizing relations with the EU and the U.S., thanks to its neutral stance during the Ukrainian crisis.
In remarks to state news agency Belta on Tuesday, Lukashenko said Belarus did not want to host such a Russian base, and claimed he knew nothing about such Russian plans. Lukashenko’s remarks came before Sunday's presidential elections.
Svitskiy also said that China, a new strategic partner of Minsk, also did not want Russia to have a new base in Belarus.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his senior statesmen to make the necessary arrangements with Minsk late September. Russia's goal is to deploy a total of 20 Su-27SM3 fighter jets in the region, approximately 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Russian authorities argue that the move was well within the framework of a 2009 "unified regional air defense system" agreement with its neighbor.
Russian military security expert Nikolay Poroskov told Anadolu Agency that Moscow's move is nothing but a response to the increased military activity of NATO in eastern Europe.
"It would be weird for Moscow not to make a counter move at a time NATO boosts its military presence in eastern European countries," Poroskov said.
A Russian air base in the country receives support from 24.4 percent from the people of Belarus while the objection is 45.1 percent, according to a latest survey conducted by Belarusian Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies.
