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ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO – the President of Belarus perhaps best known in this part of the world for his role in the hijack and diversion of a Ryanair flight in 2021 – and the current occupant of the White House share striking similarities.
The authoritarian Belarusian leader was sworn in this week to begin his seventh term – mocking his critics in his inaugural speech and insisting his country has “more democracy than those who cast themselves as its models”.
There’s no question that relations between Russia and the US have thawed significantly since that infamous first phonecall between Trump and Putin back in February. But is the world’s most powerful democracy now finding common ground with Europe’s last dictatorship?
Both Trump and Lukashenko, separated by just eight years in age, were shaped by Cold War mentalities despite growing up on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain.
The future president of Belarus was taught at school to lie on the ground with his feet pointing toward a nuclear explosion if Americans pressed the button. Young Trump was afraid of the Red Army crossing the ocean.
Later, each mastered the art of populism, tapping into widespread discontent by positioning themselves as champions of “the people” against corrupt elites.
Their populist playbook includes emotional appeals over policy substance and promises to restore lost greatness. Their leadership styles reflect a shared pragmatism – Lukashenko’s rooted in his collective farm upbringing where human rights were nonexistent, Trump’s rooted in his business background where profit typically overrides principles.
The Cold War generation remembers nuclear war threats. It is their cultural code, which leads them to rely only on themselves. All partners could betray, and all friends could turn away. It is better to build internal production in a closed circle and rely on inner capacity.
Trump and Lukashenko defeated their opponents aggressively and took their place close to the sun. Lukashenko has said millions of times that it was God who gave him Belarus. Trump says the same: it was God who saved him from a bullet for the glory of the USA.
God is an excellent measure: no one can check if God is happy or not.
Trump, of course, was democratically elected in the latest US general election. The same could hardly be said of Lukashenko’s most recent triumphs in the polls.
This shared outlook has led to quickly improving relations between the United States and Belarus since Trump’s return to power.
After five years of diplomatic isolation following Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on protestors in 2020, Belarus has suddenly found itself back in America’s good graces.
The 2020 events were pivotal — after claiming an implausible 80% victory in presidential elections, Lukashenko faced unprecedented protests demanding democratic change.
His regime’s response was ruthless: over 35,000 were detained, thousands tortured, opposition leaders exiled, independent media silenced. These actions led to international sanctions and Belarus’s diplomatic isolation — until now.
The signs of change are unmistakable: from the US side a high-ranking State Department official visited Minsk for the first time in years. Chris Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, came to Belarus to release three political prisoners: one American citizen and two Belarusians, one of whom worked for Radio Liberty.
Smith claimed that this “was a unilateral gesture by the Lukashenko authorities,” saying they are looking to improve ties with the US. The New York Times observes: “After years of the US trying to isolate Russia’s closest ally, a meeting with Belarus’s president points to better relations, raising hopes of loosening his repression and his embrace of Moscow.”
In terms of east-west relations, Lukashenko’s lobbyists are also working to build connections with Trump’s team, aiming for the lifting of sanctions and, ultimately, the recognition of the Lukashenko regime as legitimate.
“Trump’s team automatically considers everything Biden did to be wrong and will do the opposite just on principle,” Anton Penkovski, an expert in US-Belarus bilateral relations and Executive Director of the Euro-Atlantic Affairs Agency said. Belarusians who previously couldn’t get an audience with the power brokers and think tanks of Washington DC are now finding receptive ears, Penkovski said.
The economic angle cannot be overlooked in this newfound friendship. Belarus is one of the world’s major producers of potash, an important agriculatural fertiliser, along with Russia and Canada.
As Trump escalates trade tensions with Canada, Belarus and Russia become increasingly valuable alternative suppliers.
“If Trump now gets involved in a real trade war with Canada, then he needs to release more potash onto the market,” explains Penkovski.
“They could lift sanctions on both Russians and Belarusians. Simply to spite the Canadians and crash potash prices.”
In Biden’s time, Belarusian lobbyists also visited think tanks, Penkovski said, but nobody wanted to listen to them.
Democrats essentially froze contact with Lukashenko, limiting themselves to imposing sanctions once every six months. Lukashenko understood that nobody was negotiating with him. But now the time for bargaining has come, and Lukashenko has a chance, a window he will jump through. It’s not for nothing that he gave an interview to a 30-year-old crypto businessman on X.
Last month, he decided to talk not to traditional media outlets but to Mario Nawfal, an X blogger – a shrewd choice given Trump’s disdain for established media.
As Penkovski noted: “Since conventional media are currently not in favour in US, and the White House press secretary names them ‘Fake news losers’, the choice is correct from a political technology standpoint.”
To audiences unfamiliar with Lukashenko’s long history of human rights abuses, he appeared reasonable and moderate, portraying himself as a potential peacemaker who could bring together Trump, Zelenskyy, and Putin in Minsk.
There are currently around 1,200 political prisoners being detained by the Lukashenko regime – but when questioned on the issue, he deflected with vague promises: “We’re working on this. We want to negotiate.”
This approach isn’t entirely new. During Trump’s first administration, there was a similar “honeymoon period” when American officials listened to Lukashenko, made deals with him, wanted to trade and talk about investments.
Not conversations about abstract values and political moralising — exclusively money. The difference now is that Lukashenko’s political repression has intensified dramatically since the 2020 pro-democracy protests.
While there were only six political prisoners in Belarus in 2015-16, that number has exploded 200 times.
Despite these parallels, experts caution against overstating the similarities between Trump and Lukashenko. As Anton Penkovski notes, “They are still very different. Lukashenko came from the proletariat, while Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
Moreover, the institutional guardrails of American democracy provide crucial constraints that Belarus lacks.
“USA is the oldest and most stable constitutional democracy in the world that exists for 250 years without coup d’etat or regime change,” Penkovski emphasises.
But as Trump and Lukashenko find common ground in their pragmatic, personality-driven approach to power, the world faces a troubling question: can democratic values withstand the gravitational pull of leaders who see diplomacy as merely another deal to be struck, regardless of the human cost?
Sasha Romanova is a Belarusian journalist now living in Ireland.
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