Is Belarus Coming Out of Isolation?
Originally published at Belarus Digest. Please leave any comments there.
On March 3, in Moscow, Russian president Vladimir Putin presented his Belarusian counterpart Aliaksandr Lukashenka with the Order of Aleksandr Nevsky award. Ostensibly it marked his work in international cooperation in the service of the Russian Federation, linked perhaps to his hosting of the Minsk agreements of September 2014 and February 2015.
Those agreements brought in the first instance a very short-lived ceasefire in the conflict in Ukraine, and in the second, a shaky peace, which put an end to major fighting after a short 60-hour delay around the town of Debaltseve, in Donetsk region, which was taken over by the rebels.
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