Arkady Astrovsky
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- The Economist10 min
Putin, the poisoning and Belarus: what's really going on?
Following the August 20 Novichok poisoning of Alexei Navalny and the violent suppression of the 2020 Belarusian election, sustained cross-border protests in Khabarovsk and Minsk have exposed the fragility of Vladimir Putin's and Alexander Lukashenko's regimes. As European nations move to deny diplomatic recognition to Lukashenko and Putin provides emergency financial aid to maintain power, the survival of opposition leaders like Navalny and the coordinated actions of female activists are undermining the legitimacy of these authoritarian systems. Analysts warn that these unexpected collapses in long-standing autocracies signal a historic shift where the regimes' inability to control human agency creates unpredictable instability for Russia and its neighbors.