Europe must not fail the desperate citizens of Belarus
The escalating crisis in ‘the North Korea of Europe’ must focus minds in Brussels, Warsaw and Berlin
The European Union’s eastern neighbourhood is its most unstable hinterland, and its toughest strategic challenge. From the Balkans to Turkey to Ukraine, the bloc is confronted by local instability or Turkish grandstanding or Russian aggression or upheaval further east, in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Yet none of Europe’s eastern problems is more urgent than Belarus. Europe’s “last dictatorship” has been ruled since 1994 by Aleksandr Lukashenko, an erratic tyrant.
For this unrepentant Stalinist, the collapse ...