Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Minsk capital city of Belarus to protest against talks between Russia and Belarus to deepen economic ties.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko recently had their second meeting in Saint Petersburg.
During Friday’s fresh conversation between both counterparts, Putin stated that some development on settling prominent issues had been made. But Russian Economics Minister Maxim Oreshkin said after the two parties had failed to determine critical discords over oil and gas.
Demonstrators fear it could disintegrate the post-Soviet sovereignty of Belarus. More than a thousand protestors marched in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Friday, holding placards that read "Stop Annexation”. The rallied were followed on Saturday as well.
Such affairs were stoked by Moscow’s 2014 expansion of Ukraine’s the Crimean Peninsula and its backing for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Putin, who marks two decades in power later this month, has remained coy about his political future after his current presidential term ends in 2024. He dodged a question Thursday if he could potentially extend his rule by shifting into a new governing position to become the head of a union between Russia and Belarus.
Pavel Severinets, the organizer of Friday’s protest in Minsk, stated that they would not allow Vladimir Putin to be the President of new Russia-Belarus state in 2024.
Police allowed the unsanctioned protest to proceed unrestrained, even though Belarusian authorities routinely crackdown on opposition rallies.
Back in 1997, a union agreement between Russia and Belarus was signed that envisioned close political, economic and military ties, but stopped short of forming a single nation.
Lukashenko, who has controlled Belarus for more than a quarter-century with little tolerance for disagreement, depends on affordable Russian power and loans to shore up his country’s Soviet-style economy.
The Kremlin has recently raised the pressure on Belarus, increasing energy prices and cutting subsidies. Russian officials say Minsk should accept closer economic integration if it wants to benefit from lower Russian energy prices.
In an apparent bid to win concessions, Lukashenko on Friday emphasized Belarus’s role as Russia’s military ally and security partner, an argument he has used repeatedly in the past to get more subsidies from Moscow.