Irish Examiner view: Putin’s puppet clings to power in Belarus

Police detain a protester as two women try to defend him during a mass rally following presidential elections in Minsk, Belarus. Picture: AP Photo/Sergei Grits

Former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain will be remembered for his declaration of “peace for our time”.

He made it after meetings in Germany, but in less than two years the assurances he was given proved meaningless. 

He stood at the edge of a precipice that would, in time, consume almost 50m lives.

It would be wildly sensationalist to suggest we are at a similar moment, but it would be willful denial to suggest that all is well in our world and that we will not repeat the mistakes of our grandparents.

Two EU member states — Poland and Hungary — are sliding towards the kind of hostile autocracy the EU was established to avert. Their situation pales, however, when compared to unfolding events in nearby Belarus.

The situation is so fraught that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the leading opposition candidate in Sunday’s disputed — a kind description — elections felt it wise to leave the country as clashes between heavily armed police and demonstrators escalated.

As is often the case in societies where democracy is but a delicate flower, an incumbent feels able to cling to power and regards elections as a kind of pointless window dressing.

Alexander Lukashenka has been the unquestioned president of Belarus since 1994 and seems determined to remain so.

That he can have these ambitions is just another manifestation of Vladimir Putin’s unrelenting grip on Russia’s satellite states — the kind of geopolitical grip Chamberlain would have recognised.