Opinion: Severing ties with Russia will result in industrial collapse for Belarus

Vladimir Kornilov spoke about the similarity and differences between the events in Ukraine and Belarus. “Representatives of the Belarusian opposition often communicate with me in social networks: they write, argue with me. They do not like it when I compare all this with the Kiev Maidan, which I watched unfolding before my eyes. When I ask them to name the difference from Kiev, they stumble and pout even more. But I see one fundamental difference. The leaders of both the Orange Maidan of 2004 and the last Maidan of 2013-2014 tried to somehow gloss over the external pressure, foreign influence and management, tried to disassociate themselves from it. In Belarus, no one hides it that protesters receive instructions directly from the territory of neighboring Poland. When they wake up in the morning they turn to social networks for an action plan which street to block, which place to gather. We see the that the protests are openly controlled from the outside,” the expert said.

Vladimir Kornilov also expressed serious doubts about the independence of the coordinating council set up by the Belarusian opposition. “It is composed of convinced nationalists, convinced pro-Western figures and ‘grant-eaters',” the expert commented. “I watched their first press conference carefully. They kept answering that they do not know yet, that they would meet tomorrow… And when I heard them saying ‘we would be a bridge between Russia and Europe, that we are not against anyone, that we would trade with everybody and so on' I had a flashback. This is exactly, word for word, what they said in the run-up to the signing of the Ukraine-EU agreement during the last Maidan: they said they would be a bridge, they would preserve the Russian market, pay salaries, and pensions as high as in Europe. But we can see what this all has led to,” Vladimir Kornilov said.