Alexander Lukashenko: No Longer the “Last Dictator in Europe”

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was reelected for a fifth term in a comfortable election victory which raised no doubts, and his victory was followed by the EU’s decision to suspend sanctions against Minsk.

Unruffled Lukashenko had played an instrumental role in the past  year by hosting the Minsk Talks that eventually de-escalated the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and he seems to have taken advantage of the press this gave him to further ingratiate himself with Europe.

The situation was completely different in the last decade, when the US accused him of being – quote – “The Last Dictator Of Europe” —  and both Washington and Brussels enacted sanctions against his government after what they claimed were disputed elections.

Ernest Sultanov, coordinator at the MIR-Initiative project(studio guest); Vyachaslau Pazdnyak, coordinator at the Wider Europe project (Minsk) and Jan Van Benthem, foreign commentator from the Nederlands Dagblad (The Netherlands Daily) discuss our Man in the News this week.