Five Cracks in Lukashenko's Dictatorship
- Admin of the NAM
- Apr 8
- 4 min read
The system that Lukashenko — a dictator who has latched onto our country like a tick — spent decades building now resembles a building with a freshly painted façade concealing load-bearing structures eaten through by corrosion.
What we are witnessing is not an explosion, but structural erosion. Let us break this process down into concrete pressure points — concrete cracks.
1. The bureaucratic apparatus — the people on whom day-to-day governance depends.
Their loyalty today has become purely formal, and even toxic.
The dictator demands a surge in GDP and exports, but logistics chains through the Baltics are blocked despite all the regime's efforts to push through potash transit, while the Russian market demands below-cost pricing. The bureaucrat is caught between a hammer — an impossible order from above — and an anvil — criminal prosecution for mismanagement. This has produced a paralysis of initiative, and micromanagement has been taken to the point of absurdity. Subordinates are afraid to make even minor decisions, since any of them can be interpreted as sabotage.
The first crack: silent sabotage is forming within the system. Officials are not openly betraying the regime — they have simply stopped working toward results, shifting into a mode of self-preservation and paper-pushing.
2. Mid-sized and export businesses — the budget's donors, today held hostage.
The exit from European markets has made business entirely dependent on Russian orders. But the Russian market in 2026 is a high-risk zone where the rules change at the Kremlin's whim. Business owners understand: they are losing agency. No one is investing in development. All available funds are being withdrawn or mothballed. Businesses are running down their old capacity.
The second crack: a complete loss of trust in the state as an institution. A businessman in Belarus today is a temporary occupant waiting for the moment to shut up shop and leave as soon as the pressure becomes unbearable.
3. The security bloc — the regime's pillar — is also subject to erosion.
Propaganda portrays them as a monolith, but reality is different. The system of permanent repression, mass prosecutions, constant monitoring, and total surveillance has turned service into a dreary conveyor belt. Officers have become database operators. This flushes the "ideologically committed" out of the system and leaves only "functionaries." The career ladder is clogged with loyalists from the dictator's inner circle. Young majors and lieutenant colonels can see that their dedication does not convert into status or real power.
The third crack: an accumulation of psychological exhaustion. The loyalty of the security forces today is held together by fear of accountability for what was done in 2020. But the moment the system falters, that fear will transform into a readiness to hand over the leadership in exchange for amnesty.
4. The population is no longer taking to the streets — but they have "left" the state.
Rising prices on basic food and medicine are hitting the once-loyal electorate — pensioners and workers. The illusion of stability is shattered at the checkout. Living under conditions of constant background anxiety and surveillance produces not submission, but deep alienation. People have stopped perceiving this state as their own.
The fourth crack: the social contract has been torn up. The state demands obedience but delivers neither security nor prosperity. This is forming a vast layer of the population that will support any change the moment it becomes possible.
5. Within the dictator's inner circle, contradictions between factions are sharpening — and rising to the level of a battle over the future.
The economic bloc understands that without normalising relations with the EU, the country is heading toward default. The security bloc demands intensified repression to preserve its positions. These are two mutually exclusive strategies.At the same time, dependence on Russia frightens even the most loyal cronies. They understand that if Belarus is absorbed by Russia, the local elite will be replaced by imported Russian officials — as ultimately happened in occupied Crimea and the Donbas.
The fifth crack: the absence of any vision of the future. No one in Lukashenko's circle knows what comes "after." This is pushing them to seek back-channel contacts with the West and prepare exit strategies.
None of these cracks, taken individually, represents a critical tipping point for the collapse of Lukashenko's regime. But we are witnessing an accumulation of structural tension — a situation in which each group endures its discomfort separately, while the total energy of discontent grows without finding an outlet.
And any external trigger — a sharp deterioration in the dictator's health, an economic shock, or a Russian military defeat — will instantly turn these hidden cracks into the collapse of the entire structure.
The dictator believes he controls the situation through violence. But violence is a glue that dries out over time and begins to crumble. Our task is to map these cracks clearly — and to be ready for the moment when quantity transforms into quality.
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