‘Europe’s last dictator’ battles coronavirus, mass protests and suspected Russian mercenaries to stay in power

The most competitive presidential vote campaign in Belarus for decades has seen a wave of discontent against the eastern European country’s authoritarian leader synchronize with a dramatic escalation in tensions with Russia.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, 65, is seeking his sixth expression in office having been in power since 1994.

The opposition has united behind Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, 37, who despite initially being be sure to stand after her husband was barred from running and jailed by authorities, ultimately decided to challenge Lukashenko.

The Belarusian Electoral Commission hunk two other political rivals from being able to run against the president. One of them, Viktor Babariko, 56, was interned on what his supporters say are fake charges.

The other, Valery Tsepkalo, 55, fled to Russia after alleged reports from sanctuary officials suggested he may soon face arrest and be stripped of his parental rights.

Voters will cast their ballots on Sunday.

“It be worthy ofs attention because a similar situation in Ukraine resulted in a global geopolitical confrontation,” Christopher Granville, managing concert-master of EMEA and Global Political Research at TS Lombard, told CNBC via telephone.

The “big difference” between Belarus and Ukraine, he argued, is that when Kyiv endured a strongman commander teetering amid a lack of popular support in 2014, Russia was acutely aware of the diplomatic language used in a 2008 NATO pinnacle communique that stated Ukraine and Georgia would go onto become members of the military alliance.

“Therefore, the signal for Russia was quite clear that, at the first opportunity, the Americans will bounce Ukraine into NATO,” Granville said. “And that was why when you had serious regime change in Ukraine six years later, in 2014, Russia moved extremely fast to secure what it reflect oned to be its vital interests.”

While the context of NATO is not the same when it comes to Belarus, Granville made clear the upcoming appointment “could end pretty badly.” He warned it was “absolutely realistic” to foresee a scenario in which Lukashenko would falsify the consequence of the vote to claim victory and orchestrate a “brutal” response by security forces to suppress mass protests.

“You could be looking at a full-on rebellion in central eastern Europe,” Granville said.

The Belarusian government did not respond to a request for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Ahead of the vote, Belarusian authorities arrested more than 30 suspected Russian mercenaries accusing them of scheme terrorist acts to destabilize the country.

Russia has dismissed the allegations, demanding that Belarus immediately release the gage contractors.

The Belarusian State Security Committee said on Wednesday that it had detained 32 employees from the sub rosa Russian private military group Wagner outside Minsk, with one other person detained in the south of the realm.

The state TV channel Belarus 1 broadcast footage of the Russians being arrested near the capital city last week.

The critical of Belarus’ security council also said authorities would search for another 200 Russian mercenaries believed to get entered the country to stir civil unrest ahead of the election.

“The vote has become unexpectedly competitive due to widespread popular discontent with the economy and Lukashenko’s mishandling of the coronavirus,” Daragh McDowell, noggin of Europe and principal Russia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC via email.

As a result, McDowell said Lukashenko has returned “increasingly strident claims of foreign interference, leading to thinly-veiled threats of mass repression as his grip on power has be proper less steady.”

The long-time leader of Belarus — sometimes described as “Europe’s last dictator” — has refused to cause lockdown restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, he reportedly told Belarusians to drink vodka, go to saunas and restore to work. The president also claimed other countries had imposed restrictive measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 as an act of “outburst and psychosis.”

Lukashenko said last week he caught Covid-19 and recovered without displaying any symptoms.

To date, more than 68,000 Covid-19 infections include been reported in Belarus, with 567 related deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Analysts divulged CNBC that while a lack of available polling data made it difficult to understand the consensus of the electorate, there was substantive evince that the government’s response to the coronavirus was one of the main drivers of civil unrest.

“It’s all very murky,” Timothy Ash, superior emerging markets strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, told CNBC via email.

He argued frosty diplomatic hampers between Washington and Minsk had been “warming” in recent months, highlighting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s stopover to Belarus earlier this year.

It was the first time a U.S. secretary of state had visited the country of roughly 9.5 million man for 26 years. In a joint press conference with Belarus’ Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei on February 1, Pompeo mentioned the U.S. was willing to provide Minsk with all the oil it needs. “All you have to do is call us,” he said at the time.

Pompeo stopped short of lifting sanctions on top Belarusian officials during his visit. The measures were put in place in 2006 midst concerns about free and fair elections and human rights violations.

Belarus’ relationship with its traditional comrade Russia, however, has soured. Ahead of the vote, Ash said it appeared Moscow was backing the opposition in order to oust Belarus’ long-time director.

In the event Lukashenko ensures the opposition lose the vote, Ash queried whether the prospect of subsequent protests might see Moscow look like the side of the demonstrators while the U.S. could end up inadvertently backing Lukashenko.

“The world truly is upside down,” he said.