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Artyom Shraibman

“Keep us out”: Belarus’ public opinion amidst the war

The first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war have formed a clear demand in Belarusian society for staying out of the hostilities. The shock of the war between neighbours and the pacific rhetoric of Alexander Lukashenko helped the authorities to regain some of the public support lost since the 2020 political crisis.

  • Belarus
NL 77 | July - August 2022
Governance and Public Administration
Political Analysis

The society seems split when it comes to the assessment of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and the deployment of Russian troops in Belarus. The support for Belarus’ membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is declining, against the backdrop of a growing request for non-alignment.

How the war has united and divided Belarusians

Russia’s war against Ukraine has found Belarusian society in a state of deep polarization stemming from the 2020 political crisis. After Russia backed Alexander Lukashenko, and the opposition leaders received the support of the West, the internal political split gradually spilled over to geopolitical orientation, and attitudes towards the actions of Moscow and Western capitals. The balkanization of media consumption after the closure of popular non-state outlets in Belarus solidified information bubbles, consolidating and radicalizing two polar camps of the society – the ardent supporters and opponents of Lukashenko. Opinion polls in Belarus clearly showed a correlation between the respondents’ assessments of the situation in Ukraine and their media consumption: the audience of Russian and Belarusian TV channels supported the Russian narrative of the war in Ukraine, while the audience of non-state online media condemned the Russian invasion and the presence of Russian troops on Belarusian territory.

Low approval of direct participation in the war

The surveys conducted after the invasion revealed a complex picture of public opinion, which fundamentally distinguishes Belarusians from both Russians and Ukrainians. According to one telephone poll conducted in May, 51% of the respondents did not approve of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but a comparable 40% supported them. 47% did not approve of the deployment of Russian troops in Belarus, while 41% approved. Still, back in March, according to the previous wave of the telephone poll by the same institution, only a quarter of respondents blamed Russia for the war, while 51% put the blame on the US, NATO, EU, or Ukraine.

Yet, when it came to the assessment of the potential role Minsk plays and can play in the conflict, there is an unequivocal rejection of Belarusian participation in the war in any form. According to the mentioned March poll, 62% of respondents were against the use of Belarusian territory and infrastructure for waging war in Ukraine. Even more (85%) opposed the participation of the Belarusian army in the war, while only 11% were ready to support such a decision. By May the latter figure fell to 8%. A series of Chatham house polls conducted in March, April, and June found even lower support for sending Belarusian troops to fight in Ukraine: it ranged from 3% to 6%. The difference between online and telephone poll results can be attributed to an underrepresentation of rural respondents and those without internet access in online polls.

These figures partly explain why Lukashenko not only preferred to refrain from joining the Russian war effort with his troops, but also kept emphasizing his adherence to peaceful resolution of the conflict. Given such a prevalence of pacifist sentiment in Belarusian society, even within Lukashenko’s generally pro-Russian support base, the majority do not want to see Belarusians dying for the Kremlin’s cause in Ukraine.

Lukashenka’s approval rate increased

Contrary to his reputation in the West as “the co-aggressor” and a “regional troublemaker”, Lukashenko’s messaging to his domestic audience was entirely pacific – opposing the war as such, reminding of Minsk’s peacemaking initiatives, and promising not to send Belarusians to the battlefield. The latest polls seem to suggest this communication has been at least partly effective.

Many Belarus analysts have come to a belief that due to his poor performance in the 2020 presidential election and the brutal crackdown on protests afterward, Lukashenko would not be able to increase his support base above the 30-35% threshold (seen in multiple consecutive opinion polls in 2020 and 2021). However, this assessment appears no longer to be valid, at least according to the May poll carried out by a team of Belarus Change Tracker (BCT) project.

More than 1,500 people in total were interviewed in two online panels. The researchers divided the entire sample into four groups depending on their attitude to the authorities: “ardent supporters”, “inclined to trust”, “inclined not to trust”, and “ardent opponents”. In total, two groups loyal to the authorities accounted for 48%, while two disloyal groups accounted for 52%. Since the last survey using the same methodology in October 2021, the share of loyalists grew by quite substantial 10 percentage points: the ratio then was 38% to 62%.

The core of Lukashenko’s opponents remained unchanged, but some of the so-called “neutrals” moved into the loyalist camp. Apparently, the reason was their perception of the threat of war: after seeing what was happening in Ukraine, many Belarusians began to appreciate the fact that the country was not directly involved with their own troops in the conflict. Against this background, economic and political dissatisfaction with the authorities faded away. The BCT poll has also detected an increase in several indices, demonstrating the socio-economic optimism of respondents regarding the future of the country (with exception of assessing the well-being of their families). This counter-intuitive increase in optimism took place despite the economy already experiencing the first negative impact of the new rounds of sanctions by May, the month of the survey.

Such a result means that the democratic opposition and non-state media are losing the information war over the neutral and less politicized part of society, while the authorities are more effective in promoting their framing of the war with these Belarusians. A significant factor in this success was the cleansing of independent media within the country, after which their audience was reduced to those internet users, who are still politicized and willing to use VPNs and instant messengers like Telegram to access their news.

On the other hand, there has already been a similar period in the history of Belarusian public opinion observation. In 2015, against the backdrop of the war in Donbas, Lukashenko’s rating peaked at 46%, and he got through the presidential election in September 2015 without any turbulence. However, in the first half of 2016, an economic slowdown (moderate by today’s standards) saw his ratings fall to 27%. The gradual withdrawal of news about the war in Ukraine from the Belarusian information space and the more serious contraction of the economy could well reverse the trend of increasing support for the authorities before the end of the year.

Support for CSTO membership is declining

Besides triggering a certain “rally-around-the-flag” effect, the widespread intolerance to war among Belarusians has also decreased the support for being in the security alliance with Moscow. The latest (June) Chatham House poll has estimated the support for Belarus’ membership in Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at 42% – the lowest since the think-tank began its polling in Belarus in November 2020 (when this figure was as high as 63%). Slightly more, 48% of respondents favored leaving CSTO to become a neutral country, while the remaining 10% supported NATO membership. This trend toward supporting a non-aligned status has been observed since late 2021 and was accelerated by the war.

Outlook

Belarusian public opinion will likely remain volatile over the course of this war. Depending on the scale of the conflict and its salience in the Belarusian media space, the domestic factors, including the state of the economy, might gradually regain their importance for most Belarusians. Given the strong preexisting societal objection to joining the war, the decision to send Belarusian troops to Ukraine, if taken, can reverse the upward trend in Lukashenko’s approval numbers and galvanize new protests in the country.

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