The shift toward Russia comes at a time of crisis for President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who has frequently played Moscow off against the West.
After claiming for weeks that Russia was plotting to overthrow him, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus appealed to the Kremlin on Saturday for help against a wave of protests and strikes triggered by police violence after a disputed presidential election. Mr. Lukashenko, the Kremlin said in a statement, had talked with President Vladimir V. Putin and had agreed with the Russian leader on the need “to strengthen allied relations” and prevent “destructive forces” from using the political turmoil in Belarus to “harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries.” Mr. Putin and Mr. Lukashenko, the Kremlin said, “expressed confidence that all existing problems will be settled soon.” As recently as last month, Mr. Lukashenko was accusing Moscow of engineering plots to overthrow his government and even of sending mercenaries to Belarus to disrupt the presidential election, which was held last Sunday. But Mr. Lukashenko, facing the gravest crisis of his 26 years in power after claiming a landslide victory in what Western governments and many Belarusians dismissed as a rigged election, now seems to have calculated that Russia offers the best hope for his survival. The European Union, outraged by a violent crackdown on protesters by Mr. Lukashenko’s security forces, said on Friday that it was preparing to impose new sanctions on Belarus, while the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called on the country to conduct new “free and fair” elections. Mr. Lukashenko, who has often been called “Europe’s last dictator,” has danced between Russia and the West for decades, playing each off against the other as he struggled to keep his country’s decaying economy afloat and stay in power. In Minsk, the Belarusian capital, thousands of people brought flowers to the Pushkinskaya metro station to a makeshift memorial for Aleksandr Taraikovsky, a protester who died there during some of the heaviest clashes with the police earlier in the week.
