Lukashenka should be committed…to a villa

At any time over the past 12 years, it would have been not just implausible, but sensationallyso. Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus has just denounced Russia and praised the West.

He claimed it was not a radical change. But it was - in rhetoric at least. "We are in the centre of Europe and we must be on normal terms with the East and the West." Previous policy, based on the creation of a union state with Russia, was all wrong: "we have been flying on just one wing".

Never mind that Belarus’s one-winged foreign policy is the creation of the peppery former chicken farmer, whose regime has murdered, bullied, beaten and blustered its way to international isolation over the past decade.

Lukashenka cited Finland, Sweden, Germany, France and even Poland as commendable economic models.

The prospect of Belarus emerging from its black hole is tantalising. There is a precedent, of sorts. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova came to power as a communist leader determined to make his divided, dirt-poor country into another Cuba, perhaps even joining Russia and Belarus in their union state. But he soon turned into a moderate social democrat, suspicious of the Kremlin and determined to push Moldova westwards (shamefully, meeting little response).

Will the same happen with Lukashenka? As Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation points out: "Lukashenka’s overtures are marred by his difficulty finding an idiom understandable to a Western audience". That’s putting it mildly. Having long seen the Belarusian leader, quite rightly, as a classic homo sovieticus, whose pro-Kremlin sentimentality and do-it-yourself authoritarianism are matched only by a volatile temper and crudity of manner, outsiders find it hard to harbour any hopes of a change.

The comparison with Moldova is only partial. Whatever his views on foreign policy, Voronin was no authoritarian: for all its problems, Moldova is a model of Athenian democracy compared to Belarus. Lukashenka’s Damascene conversion to the joys of the western model have not brought any change in his repressive domestic policies: the recent local elections were a farce, with most opposition candidates and their supporters being intimidated into withdrawing.

Previous tiffs with the East and flirtations with the West have always ended up with business as usual. This time, though, the rhetoric is certainly stronger. Bruised from his recent brawls with Russia about oil and gas supplies, Lukashenka’s denunciations of Russian energy imperialism would not sound out of place coming from a Pole. He now says he wants western companies to buy stakes in his country’s energy infrastructure. That may be wishful thinking, for now. But nothing can be ruled out. The ‘union state’, subject of so much waffle and wishful thinking over the past decade, is now dismissed by all concerned.

The point is that Russia’s swaggering, clumsy policy has alienated all its loyal ex-Soviet allies - Armenia, the central Asian states, now even Belarus. That creates a huge, unexpected and undeserved opening for the West. Handled wrongly, this could be disastrous - trying to prop up Lukashenka against Russian pressure would make the West look appallingly cynical.

But it is also possible to talk to the nomenklatura - the senior officials and businessmen who administer the country. Neither pariahdom nor incorporation into Russia offers an them an attractive future.

In an ideal world, the fractured, weak opposition would unite and sweep Lukashenka and his cronies out of power and into prison. But in the real world, if providing him (and them) with luxurious villas in Montenegro or Cyprus meant freeing Belarus from both dictatorship and Russian hegemony, it would look a pretty good outcome.

• The author is central and eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist.

At any time over the past 12 years, it would have been not just implausible, but sensationallyso. Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus has just denounced Russia and praised the West.