This article was first published by Stratfor Worldview and is reprinted here with permission.
European leaders may be hoping that the growing costs associated with the arrest of just one Belarusian dissident will be enough to deter Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's anti-democratic behavior in the future. But if brazen actions such as the May 23 arrests stifle dissent and weaken the threat against Lukashenko's regime, he may see the tradeoff as a bargain.
Weighing Blowback Against Crushing Dissent
Belarus is already experiencing consequences for forcing a RyanAir flight to make an unscheduled landing in Minsk on May 23, providing Belarusian security forces an opportunity to detain a high-profile dissident journalist, Roman Protasevich, and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. In addition to the European Union ordering European carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace, airlines including KLM, Lufthansa and airBaltic are taking the additional step of suspending services to Minsk. The European Union is also likely to request a ban on all Belarusian carriers from flying to EU member states just as travel on the Continent is starting to reopen after over a year of pandemic-induced restrictions. The European Union is also planning to sanction Belarusian officials behind the decision and Belarusian dissidents are calling on European governments to sanction Belarus' potash industry, a critical natural resource that Belarus relies upon for export, as well as other key economic sectors like oil and petrochemicals. Belarus is also likely facing diplomatic expulsions from European cities that would complicate relations with other European countries, reduce services available to Belarusian citizens abroad and make a repeat of the May 23 incident more complicated by limiting the Belarusian intelligence service's presence abroad. Reports suggest that Belarusian operatives were likely on the ground in Athens when Protasevich and Sapega were boarding their flight, and were on the flight itself.
Though the costs of the May 23 action appear to be substantial, a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the May 23 incident must take into account the adverse impact these arrests will have on the thousands of Belarusian dissidents living in exile throughout Europe. Belarusian dissident and journalist Stepan Putilo told the BBC on May 26 that he was taking threats to his personal safety more seriously now following the dramatic arrests of Protasevich and Sapega. Putilo founded the social media channel Nexta, which Protasevich worked for at the beginning of the Belarusian popular uprising in 2020, and which was a valuable communications outlet for the opposition. Protasevich's work with Nexta is likely one of the reasons why Minsk targeted him, and the dozens of staff members currently working for Nexta in exile in Warsaw and Vilnius are just as much targets as was Protasevich. Other staff members of Nexta did not want the BBC to reveal their identities, but admitted that they felt less safe in Poland following Protasevich's arrest and video confession that appeared to have been made under physical duress. Viachka Krasulin, another dissident who fled to Lithuania from Belarus after police assaulted him in 2020, shared a similar sentiment with AP, noting that the May 23 incident called into question the safety of dissidents across Europe.
Lukashenko has succeeded in suppressing the opposition movement in Belarus, but its continuation outside the country still threatens his political survival. The Belarusian president likely values his political survival over blowback from the forced landing that, while seemingly substantial, does not pose an existential threat to his survival. The May 23 brazen plane diversion and arrests signal Minsk's intent and capability to target dissidents in exile. Such actions can be considered successful in preserving the Lukashenko regime if they stifle the work of Belarusian dissidents in exile, or at least raise doubts in their minds about their safety and whether their work is worth continuing. Lukashenko's security forces could even benefit from reduced air connections because it would hamper the ability of dissidents currently in Belarus to flee to safer cities elsewhere in Europe. While Lukashenko established his government's ability to target dissidents while in exile with the May 23 action, it is much easier, of course, to arrest and punish them if they remain in the country, where his regime has steadily beefed up its means of quashing dissent since last fall's mass protests.
Communications between Lukashenko and a former leader of his intelligence services suggest that the May 23 arrests build on a previously suspected effort to target the Belarusian dissident community going back to 2012. In January 2021, EUObserver published secret recorded details of conversations involving the former head of Belarus' intelligence service, Vadim Zaitsev, from April 2012. Those conversations suggested that Zaitsev briefed special operations units on clandestinely assassinating Lukashenko's enemies in exile in Germany. Conversations suggested that Lukashenko had dedicated $1.5 million to support the operation. While Zaitsev emphasized inconspicuousness and discretion with some targets, he advised that other assassinations needed to send a clear message. Zaitsev reportedly briefed would-be assassination teams that "if everything [looks like] natural causes, it won't get into people's minds the same way".
One of those targets, opposition journalist Pavel Sheremet, died when an explosive device detonated the morning of July 20, 2016, under his personal vehicle in the middle of an intersection in central Kyiv as he drove to a studio to host his regular radio program. The attackers went out of their way to kill Sheremet in a way that attracted international attention and sent an implicit threat to other outspoken exiled critics of the Belarusian and Russian governments. Minsk and Moscow have publicly denied any connection to the assassination, but for the intended audience of Sheremet's followers and fellow government dissidents, it was clear who was behind the attack. Similarly, the forced landing of a commercial aircraft in contravention of international norms on civil aviation has also attracted international attention and sent an implicit threat to outspoken critics in exile. Minsk's efforts to blame the incident on a bomb threat from Hamas offer the thinnest of veils to maintain a modicum of plausible deniability, but the message to the intended audience is clear: You could be next.
Extraterritoriality: Not Just a Belarusian Tactic
Belarus is by no means the only country that has risked the consequences associated with extraterritorial operations to crack down on government critics. Minsk's increasingly indispensable ally, Moscow, has led the way for other repressive regimes looking for inspiration on how to intimidate and silence critics at home and abroad in the 21st century. U.S. and European officials have blamed Russia for more than a dozen suspicious deaths and attacks involving Russian dissidents since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999. While some have resulted in sanctions and diplomatic expulsions, nothing suggests Moscow will stop targeting dissidents abroad. Similar to Vadim Zaitsev's advice in 2012 to send a message, Moscow has used exotic means to attack dissidents that increase the dramatic impact of the operations, ensuring they capture international attention and instill fear in fellow dissidents.
One of the most pronounced cases of Moscow targeting dissidents abroad was the 2018 attack against Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, involving a rare poison from the Novichok nerve agent family. The attack ultimately failed to kill Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who served time in a Russian prison for working with the British, but it still succeeded in sending a message to former Soviet and Russian intelligence officers not to betray Moscow. While Moscow denied responsibility, Russian authorities also telegraphed their involvement by using poison as rare as Novichok that had a well-documented provenance in the former Soviet Union. It also did not matter that the operatives who delivered the poison were filmed on CCTV and later identified. That Moscow was able to carry out the attack in broad daylight only reinforced the message to dissident communities that Russia could target them and get away with it. Russia appeared to double down on the brazen use of Novichok toxins, apparently using a similar poison to attack outspoken Putin critic Alexei Navalny in August 2020. This effectively sent a warning to dissidents across Russia and the world that Moscow can attack them and is not particularly concerned about the consequences.
Lukashenko was well aware of the international response to Moscow's past operations but still chose to proceed with the May 23 operation. The Skripal operation came with costs: The United States, EU members and other countries expelled at least 126 Russian diplomats in the aftermath of the attack and the United States closed the Russian Consulate in Seattle. The United Kingdom had similarly expelled a group of diplomats after the assassination of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. While the response to the 2018 attack on Skripal was larger, Russia ultimately maintains the capability to carry out another such brazen attack, and has already demonstrated it can do so with the 2019 assassination of a Chechen man living in exile in Berlin. It will likely continue to conduct assassinations abroad in order to remind government critics around the world that just because they live outside of Russia does not mean they are safe from Russian state-sanctioned violence.
China has also detained foreign passport holders for various reasons, including to crack down on dissidents living abroad, but has stopped short of extraterritorial assassinations. One of the most pronounced examples from China was the October 2015 disappearance of Swedish passport holder and Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai, who disappeared from his vacation property in Pattaya, Thailand. He reappeared in a recorded confession in Chinese custody a month later. Thailand had no record of Gui leaving the country and, due to the murkiness of his disappearance, it is most likely that Chinese operatives took Gui through extralegal operations. The goal of such operations isn't to detain every dissident, but to demonstrate reach in order to intimidate dissident communities and deter their actions. China appears to have been successful in intimidating outside critics from traveling to China or even nearby countries, but must walk a fine line between discouraging critics and welcoming foreign investors and business leaders, whom Beijing deems economically essential. Belarus faces a similar dilemma and will have to convince foreign companies that Minsk will not directly interfere in their operations as long as they do not openly oppose the government.
The October 2018 abduction and execution of Saudi journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul is perhaps one of the most egregious examples of national leaders punishing dissidents in recent years. While the fallout from the incident brought threats of punishment against Riyadh, strategic reasons for maintaining relationships with Saudi Arabia ultimately prevailed. Such episodes highlight the precarious situation of dissidents in exile and, ultimately, the limitations against punishing states that use undemocratic and authoritarian tactics against their critics.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his tendency to target his critics abroad through clandestine means offer final cautionary examples of how extraterritorial tactics complicate the lives of dissidents. In fall 2020, Rwandan national hero and government critic Paul Rusesabagina disappeared during a trip to the United Arab Emirates. Rusesabagina had fled to Belgium in 1996 following an assassination attempt, and Kagame had publicly warned him not to meddle in Rwandan politics while in exile. Shortly after disappearing from the United Arab Emirates, Rusesabagina reappeared in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where authorities arrested him on terrorism charges. He is currently facing trial. The nature of his unexpected return to Kigali suggests Rwandan operatives had a hand in coercing him back at the behest of Kagame.
The impact of Rusesabagina's arrest was immediate. Fellow Kagame critic Faustin Rukundo (who is based in the United Kingdom) told The Guardian shortly after Rusesabagina's disappearance that he had canceled a trip to Nairobi after receiving a mysterious phone call that he suspected of coming from Rwandan intelligence services. Another Kagame critic living in exile in Belgium, former Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, said that he and other Rwandan exiles changed their phones on a monthly or even weekly basis to avoid detection. Kagame faced censure from U.S. and EU officials following Rusesabagina's arrest, but this appears to have had little impact: In February 2021, unknown assailants pulled exiled Rwandan opposition politician Abdallah Bamporiki from his vehicle near Cape Town, South Africa, and shot him in the head. Police are still investigating the matter, but the Rwandan dissident community abroad is convinced Kagame was also behind that action.
