The strange timing of Viktor Orbán’s trip to Minsk

The last time I wrote about Belarusian-Hungarian relations was in February 2019, when there was a possibility that Hungary would withhold its consent for the extension of the EU’s arms embargo against Belarus. Viktor Orbán threatened to veto the extension of the embargo unless negotiations between Brussels and Minsk over the Belarus Partnership Priorities, which would deal with such topics as people-to-people contacts, environmental issues, economic cooperation, and human rights, were expedited. Again, in the last minute, the Hungarian prime minister backed down. Since the embargo must be extended every year, it seems that Hungary didn’t veto the extension in February 2020 either.

In February 2019, an early Orbán visit to Belarus was rumored, but it took almost a year and a half before the visit materialized on Friday, June 5. Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been president of Belarus since 1994, but he had never welcomed a Hungarian prime minister to his country. The two men, however, are old friends. They met relatively often in the company of other leaders not known for their democratic convictions, such as Vladimir Putin, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.

Judging from the two men’s comments after their meeting, the trip must be considered a success. Orbán made sure that Lukashenka and he saw eye to eye on many subjects, especially on the question of the EU sanctions and the arms embargo. He made it clear that Hungary supports the EU’s Eastern Partnership strategy, which “cannot be built while sanctions are in place,” and therefore Hungary “represents the position that the EU should finally lift its sanctions against Belarus.” It seems that this time, unlike in the past, he committed Hungary to the Belarusian side.

According to the website of the Hungarian ministry of foreign relations and trade, the two countries signed four cooperation agreements, including one concerning nuclear energy. In addition, the two countries want to raise the volume of trade. To facilitate this, Hungary extended a €40 million line of credit to Belarus. I’m breathlessly waiting to see the results of the agreed-upon close cooperation between the Belarusian and Hungarian news agencies as well as the collaboration between diplomatic academies, which will allegedly result in “a different approach” and “wider purview” of issues that Belarusian and Hungarian diplomats face.

On the nuclear front, according to Orbán the two countries “decided to establish close engineering and technical cooperation,” which will include “closely observing developments at the Russian-built power plant in Astravets.” Finally, no state visit is complete without the announcement of scholarships for students to study in Hungary.

No mention was made of the Hungarian gift of 165 million forints for the renovation of the Uspenski Cathedral of the Virgin Mary and Saint Stanislav in Mogilev. I must say that Lukashenka’s gift to Orbán was a great deal more modest. It was a football jersey with his name on it.

Lukashenka called Orbán’s visit to Minsk “a bold step (in this seemingly complicated psychological and medical situation called a pandemic), which allowed [the two men] to break the so-called international quarantine and revive the format of live communication between European states.” As is known, Lukashenka doesn’t believe in the pandemic. He called fear of COVID-19 a psychosis that “wise Belarusian people should ignore,” even though so far there are 46,000 confirmed cases and 253 deaths in the country. In addition, he stressed that Hungary is the closest partner of Belarus in Europe because “Hungary understands us and helps advance our relations with the European Union like no one else.” He also alluded to the fact that Hungary is helpful when it comes to Belarus’s relationship with NATO.

Government-critical commentators uniformly condemned Viktor Orbán’s decision to publicly declare his intention to defy the majority of EU member states and stand by Lukashenka’s brutal dictatorship. Among them, I thoroughly enjoyed Ildikó Lendvai’s “Dictators side by side” in Hírklikk.

His critics apparently call Lukashenka “bat’ka” (little father), a derogatory nickname. Without hesitation, he has jailed four of his opponents in the course of the last 20 years. His wins are impressive; he never fails to get at least 75% of the votes cast. Elections are coming up again in August, but he already announced that he is ready run even in 2025. The Belarusian President has picked his successor, his 15-year-old son, but he will have to wait a few years to be eligible for the job. Obviously, Lukashenka likes the North Korean model.

And that brings us to the forthcoming presidential election, which will be Lukashenka’s sixth. Two Hungarian organs, the independent Napi.hu and the government’s Magyar Nemzet, describe it as a tough fight. It is impossible to get a realistic sense of how Lukashenka and his opponents are faring because pollsters must obtain permission to hold polls and, naturally, Lukashenka wouldn’t authorize an honest poll. Instead, informal polling is taking place on Facebook, where an independent website called TUT asks people to vote on whether they prefer tractor to potato pie, flap, or high-tech. Tractor is Lukashenka, potato pie is Viktor Babariko, head of Belgazprombank. Flap is Sergei Tichanovski, a vlogger, and high-tech is Valery Tsepkalo, a former diplomat. So far, potato pie has the greatest number of votes and Tractor the fewest.

Lukashenka made sure that his opponents would have to work hard to be able to run against him. They each need 100,000 signatures in a country of 10 million. According to Magyar Nemzet, thousands of people stand in line to add their signatures to support people they hope can unseat their dictator of the last 25 years. Apparently, Tractor is not doing at all well. Magyar Nemzet’s article is surprisingly evenhanded, perhaps because the author, Anton Bendarzhevski, although he works for the Fidesz paper, seems to have Belorusian roots and knows the Belorusian political situation. He reports on Lukashenka’s political and economic problems and his brutal steps against his opponents. In the last few weeks, for instance, several people were arrested, which may add further stress to EU-Belarus relations. If Bendarzhevski is correct, there is a good chance that Lukashenka will not be president after August 9.

But then, what on earth was Viktor Orbán doing in Minsk? First of all, the trip is close to the presidential election. Normally, official visits are not scheduled within two months of the big day because such a state visit might influence the outcome one way or the other. Given the general political mood in Belarus, Orbán’s visit might even have a negative effect on Lukashenska’s chances. After all, Orbán by now is globally known to be a pocket dictator akin to Lukashenska. Moreover, the Belorusian public might not want the European Union to lift the embargo as long as Lukashenka is in power because such a move might be interpreted as approval of the hated Belarusian dictator. In brief, I am puzzled by Orbán’s decision to travel to Minsk just now, when the fate of Lukashenka is uncertain. Moreover, since Orbán’s track record for getting people he supports elected or re-elected is poor, Lukashenka might have enlisted help from the wrong friend.

June 7, 2020