Drive to survive: Lukashenka’s foreign policy shifts from simulating multi-vectorism to stealthily bandwagoning with Russia’s military adventurism

This article discusses the key patterns of Belarusian foreign policy, identifying causes and explaining patterns of its transformation, particularly after the outbreak of the Belarusian crisis (2020) and the Russian–Ukrainian war (2022). It argues that the geostrategic roots of the “inbetweenness” in Belarusian foreign policy grew out of the specifics of both the country’s hybrid identity and geopolitical alliance-building with Moscow, which entailed the rise of the Russia–EU/West relationship as a crucial determinant of Belarusian foreign and security policy. In particular, Belarus’s ability to engage the West became an integral element of the model of Belarus–Russia relations, which emerged in the 1990s. Minsk’s ability to simulate multi-vectorism permitted it to withstand Moscow’s pressure and maintain the status quo in Belarus–Russia relations. Even if the two crises, domestic (2020) and geopolitical (2022), triggered a process of full subordination of Belarusian foreign and security policy to Moscow, and the former’s manifest bandwagoning on the latter’s military adventurism in Ukraine, the remaining geopolitical ambivalence of societal attitudes continues to strongly affect the country’s foreign policy.