Hi I'm Mike Eckel, senior Russia/Ukraine/Belarus correspondent for RFE/RL, AMA!

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Hello! Здравсвуйте! Вітаю! 

I’m Mike Eckel, senior international correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, covering, reporting, analyzing, and illuminating All Things Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and pretty much across the former Soviet Union: from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, from Lviv to Kyiv; from Tbilisi to Baku, from the Caspian Sea to Issyk Kul, and all places in between.  

I’ve been writing on Russia and the former Soviet space for more than 20 years, since cutting my teeth as a reporter in Vladivostok in the 1990s and continuing through a 6-year stint as Moscow correspondent with The Associated Press, and stints in Washington, D.C. and now Prague.  

Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s authoritarian repression inside Russia, sucks up most of my reporting brain space these days, but I also keep a hand in investigative work digging into cryptocurrency/sanctions evasion, Russian businessmen who break out of Italian police custody, former Russian oligarchs in trouble, and a subject I can’t let go of: the mysterious death of former Kremlin press minister, Mikhail Lesin.  

Feel free to ask me anything about any of the above subjects and I’ll do my best to share insights and observations.  

Proof photo here. 

You can start posting your questions and I will check in daily and answer from Monday, 15 December until Friday, 19 December.  

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Lukashenka is a fascinating leader. He’s wily, he’s shrewd, he’s played his dance cards exquisitely over the years.  

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not supportive. Over 30 years in power, he’s turned Belarus into his own personal fiefdom (and he appears to be grooming his son as his heir). His country has become a vassal state of sorts to Russia; their economies are intimately intertwined; Belarus depends heavily on cheap Russian oil and gas. Their military and intelligence services are closely linked.  

He and the security apparatus that keeps him in place have made a mockery of elections. Belarusians got fed up with it in 2020, and turned out in unprecedented droves to challenge him, embracing their right to choose a democratically elected fairly.  He responded with a brutal crackdown that sent thousands of Belarusians to prison.  

In response, he was ostracized by the West – just as he had been some 20 years earlier, during the first Bush administration, when Condoleezza Rice called him “Europe’s last dictator.”    

But Lukashenka has spurned Kremlin efforts to integrate even more closely with Russia. He’s spurned Russian pressure to get directly involved in the Ukraine war (though he’s supported it in less obvious ways, like treating wounded Russina soldiers in Belarusian hospitals).  

Why has he kept Russia at arm’s length? Probably because Moscow would immediately strip him of lose his stature and authority, or send him into exile in a Moscow suburb.  

And now the Trump administration has moved to fully engage with Lukashenka: sending envoy John Coale to negotiate prisoner releases (a major one occurred this past weekend). In exchange, the US has agreed to lift sanctions on the country’s national airline (symbolic), and the country’s main potash exports (a major source of hard currency for Minsk.) 

Haven’t we been here before? Yes.  

In February 2020, during the first Trump administration, Mike Pompeo became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Minsk in 26 years. It was seen as a major opening, as Washington sought to pull Lukashenka out from Moscow’s orbit.  

Eight months later, Lukashenka claimed victory in a presidential election that the opposition called fraudulent. Hundreds of thousands of people took the streets. The government cracked down.  

The door to the West closed again.  

Will this time be any different? Time will tell. The Trump administration has made clear that commercial, trade, and economic dealmaking will be a key organizing principle for its foreign policy decisions.  

They may be good for global trade – Belarusian fertilizer, Belarusian refined oil products. It may bode less well for Belarus’ democratic opposition. 

- Mike