Takeover by Stealth: The Curious Case of Russia’s Belarus Policy
Journal: Problems of Post-Communism
Year: 2023

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Aleksandr Lukashenka and his regime began drifting away from Moscow’s orbit of influence. Less than eight years later, Belarus has turned into a client state, serving as a bridgehead for Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine. How could this happen? The existing literature tends to emphasize ideological and regime-type factors. Such accounts, however, are incomplete. This article presents a realist patron–client theory that incorporates the dimension