As a fairly small (population-wise) country squeezed between Russia and the European Union, Belarus is destined to be a geopolitical tuning fork, whose reactions and demeanor, if properly understood, provide valuable feedback to the policies of its more powerful neighbors. Thus, one can observe that by exerting exceptional pressure on Minsk, the collective West is de facto assessing the limits of Russia’s expansionism and helping Russia itself to refine its tactics in that area. But not everyone in the West is oblivious to this inadvertent outcome of economic sanctions against Belarus; it seems behind-the-scenes negotiations may have started some time ago. On September 23, during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei met with his Finnish counterpart, Pekka Haavisto (Belta, September 23), a breakthrough of sorts. It was subsequently revealed that Helsinki offered its mediation in the resolution of the Belarusian political crisis (Svaboda.org, September 23)
Divining the Meaning of Recent Developments on Belarus’s Two Geopolitical Flanks – Jamestown
