President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s visit to Moscow, which had been scheduled for November 25–26 and then postponed, eventually occurred on December 15. By most accounts, the contentious issues facing Lukashenka and his counterpart, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, were not resolved: the two sides neither agreed on the proposed Russian airbase in Belarus nor on any major new Russian loans to Belarus. Yet at the same time, a scandalous exchange between the two leaders, which was also anticipated by some observers, did not occur either. Such expectations were based on Lukashenka’s evenhanded treatment of the two sides of the Russian-Turkish conflict …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation