The regime of authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka is set to hold a vote on February 27 with the aim of tightening his grip on power in Belarus and possibly ending the country's nuclear-free status.
Lukashenka, 67, has proposed amending the constitution, the third time he has done so since coming to power in 1994, that would allow him to rule to 2035, offer him a new lever of power, and abolish a section of the document defining Belarus as a “nuclear-free zone,” possibly paving the way for the return of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.
The scheduled vote, which has been denounced by the country's opposition, comes as Russia continues its unprovoked assault on Ukraine, with thousands of troops moving in from Belarus.
Some 30,000 Russian troops had been stationed in the country, deployed ostensibly to take part in joint drills with Belarusian forces. But on the day the exercises were due to end, February 20, Defense Minister Viktar Khrenin announced the soldiers would remain indefinitely.
Lukashenka proposed the constitutional changes following domestic and international backlash over his violent crackdown on dissent after a disputed August 2020 presidential election that he claims gave him a sixth consecutive term. The opposition says the vote was rigged.
Deemed illegitimate by much of the West, Lukashenka now depends on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has exploited that weakness to extract further concessions on what the Russian leader hopes will be cemented under a final union state.
“The Kremlin was interested in the referendum at the beginning of the political crisis in order to mitigate the potential tensions in Belarus through the appearance of compromise,” Alesia Rudnik, a Belarusian analyst based in Sweden, said in e-mailed remarks to RFE/RL.
“Instead of mitigating the conflict, it now serves as an instrument to secure the power of Lukashenka and stabilize his positions. The referendum of February 27, therefore, appears as a guarantee for the artificial legitimacy for Lukashenka and prevents any potential threat to his power.”
Lukashenka, a former communist-era collective farm manager, has a history of tampering with Belarus’s constitution.
In 1996, he significantly expanded his own powers as president and reduced the powers of parliament, while in 2004 he lifted restrictions on the number of presidential terms that can be served.
In 2016, Lukashenka first mentioned a possible third round of constitutional changes, announcing the need to “create a group of wise men, lawyers who will analyze our fundamental law.”
That talk largely vanished until the aftermath of the disputed 2020 presidential election, when tens of thousands took to the streets in some of Belarus’s biggest protests in its post-Soviet history.
As his security forces cracked down hard on protesters, Lukashenka’s power appeared to be slipping.
On August 17, 2020, Lukashenka was jeered by workers at the Minsk Wheeled Tractor Factory (MZKT), the alleged backbone of his support. Later that day, Lukashenka said Belarus could hold a new presidential election after the country adopted a new constitution.
By February 2021, Lukashenka had unveiled plans to give more powers to the All-Belarus People's Assembly, a periodic gathering of loyalists that currently has no governing status under the law. He said it could provide a “safety net” in case “the wrong people come to power, and they have different views.”
On December 27, Belarus published proposed changes to its constitution and published them for public comment.
It became immediately clear that the changes would strengthen Lukashenka's grip on power.
The revamped All-Belarus People’s Assembly, if the changes are approved as expected, would act as a parallel structure next to parliament, holding wide-ranging powers to approve foreign, security, and economic policy. It would also be able to propose changes to the constitution, draft laws, and select members of the country's Central Election Commission and judges of the top courts.
According to the proposed amendments, a sitting president automatically becomes a delegate of the 1,200-seat assembly and may chair it if elected by other delegates.
The proposed changes also would give Lukashenka immunity from prosecution and put in place a limit of two terms in office, each for five years. However, the restrictions would only apply going forward, meaning Lukashenka could rule until he is 81 years old.
The amendments would also prohibit anyone who temporarily left the country in the last 20 years from becoming president, a change aimed directly at opposition members, many of whom were forced into exile to avoid political persecution.
That includes Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya who supporters say actually won the disputed August 2020 presidential poll.
Besides stability, the Kremlin may be hoping the constitutional changes -- and a new military doctrine -- could pave the way for a return of nuclear missiles being based in Belarus, argues William Alberque, an analyst of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
“This new military doctrine, which has not been made public, is reported to include greater integration between the two militaries, which probably requires the changes to Belarus’s neutrality and nuclear-free status to allow for potential Russian nuclear deployments to Belarusian territory,” Alberque wrote.
Unlike previous ballots for presidential and parliamentary elections, the referendum papers will only appear in Russian, a symbolic sign perhaps of Lukashenka’s growing fealty to the Kremlin.