Fifteen years ago, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to Belarus under President Aleksandr Lukashenko as “the last remaining true dictatorship in the heart of Europe.” After his regime rigged yet another election this month and brutally suppressed peaceful protests, arresting some 7,000 people, the moniker resurfaced in headlines.
But the truth is that if angry citizens manage to overthrow Lukashenko, there’s still Vladimir Putin, an autocrat in his own right who has steadily eroded human rights and democratic norms in Russia and engineered constitutional changes that would effectively make him president for life.
