Nonresident Scholar Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center
Artyom Shraibman is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. His research focuses on Belarus-related developments, including domestic politics and foreign policy. He is also the founder of Sense Analytics, a political consultancy.
Shraibman is the former political editor of the TUT.BY website, the most popular non-state media outlet in Belarus and writes frequently for Zerkalo.io (a media outlet created by former TUT.BY staff) on Belarusian politics.
Shraibman has also worked as a senior political advisor to the United Nations in Minsk and as an intern at the German Bundestag, where he assisted the team of MP Oliver Kaczmarek.
Shraibman has an MSc in politics and communication from the London School of Economics and an international law degree from Belarusian State University in Minsk.
If Putin changes his mind about Prigozhin and initiates some sort of revenge, Minsk will not be able to protect the Wagner leader, who knows that full well. Lukashenko in turn cannot believe the promises of Prigozhin, a warlord who has just betrayed his patron, to diligently follow Belarusian rules.
The fate of Belarus as a state is becoming increasingly tied to the outcome of a future peace settlement. It will be hard for any subsequent government in Minsk to distance itself from Russia economically and politically of its own accord. But once Belarus starts hosting Russian nuclear weapons, it will be downright impossible.
There has never been such a gaping chasm between Lukashenko’s foreign policy ambitions and Minsk’s sheer irrelevance in the eyes of those whose attention he seeks.
Even before Makei’s sudden death, it was hard to see how Minsk could ever return to its multi-vector foreign policy as long as Lukashenko remains in power, not to mention while the fighting rages in Ukraine.
If there was once speculation about how the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko would act in the event of a major regional conflict, that is no longer the case. Belarusian territory is simply a staging area for the Russian army, and the extent of the threat from Belarus is determined by one factor alone: how keen the Kremlin is to go to war.
What does Russia hope to achieve in 2022? The Moscow Times asked 10 leading experts in Russian foreign policy to give their predictions for the coming year.