PART I

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy tête-à-tête with his Belarusian counterpart, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, on September 14, in Sochi – their first meeting since the outbreak of mass protests in Belarus against the flawed August 9 presidential election. Having mismanaged the election, used excessive force against protesters, and reverted to shrill anti-Western messaging (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 8, 10), Mr. Lukashenka turned to Russia for economic, political, advisory and security-sector support. He risks undoing his own work of nearly two decades to safeguard Belarus’s independence from Russia; and he is forfeiting his more recent successes at rapprochement with the West.