On May 14 the visit of President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to Minsk ended. Formally, its outcome was the signing of more than a dozen of different bilateral intergovernmental agreements.
However, the head of the Analytical Center "Strategy" Leonid Zaika believes the meeting between the presidents-old-timers should be considered in a way of "digging deeper". According to him, Lukashenko and Nazarbaev are now very concerned about "how to adapt to the democratization of Russia"
"This meeting has a big sense. The fact is that three presidents-over-termed meet, two of whom are traditional authoritarian leaders who rule "for a long time, and wisely", Leonid Zaika said in an interview to UDF.BY. "In front of Putin, who came for a third term, appears the situation of internal political conflict. Therefore, Putin should be president different from Nazarbayev and Lukashenko. Putin feels he must meet the requirements of the new Russia. While Nazarbayev and Lukashenko are forming the political configuration for themselves, and therefore they can be quite not understandable for Putin. Two different strategies collide: Putin's one, which presupposes more dynamic way, the pro-Western one, and Nazarbayev and Lukashenko could not present nothing better, but the idea of Eurasian integration. Now the authorship of this idea is attributed to Nazarbayev.
The main question remains beyond the public discussion : how will Putin behave, how will be their behavior? They are presidents for too long...
But there are specific questions. First - Gas: Kazakhstan has ceased to swing in the previous volumes the gas to Russia, there was a problem with its processing. Second - Oil: Kazakhstan is interested in creating there a little plant of one and a half or two million tons of oil refining. It should be a prototype to drive the oil to Europe, because Europe likes to buy Slavic oil.
Moreover, few people know about Belarus, but Kazakhstan announced a program of industrialization (plans to build about 400 enterprises). Since the concept of "industrialization" is funny, there is the term "new industrialization" - by completely new technologies, like a movie in 3D.
- So, those experts are right who say that Nazarbayev intends to negotiate with Lukashenko against Putin?
- Nazarbayev is the oldest political, phenomenal person. Even under Gorbachev, he had to become the prime minister of the new updated Union, but he did not go to Viskuli. He is the long-playing eastern politician. Kazakhstan is gold, oil, natural gas, it is privatization, nomenclature, it is the East.
For Nazarbayev Lukashenko is just a young man, however, of the pre-retirement age. Previously, Nazarbayev was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, and Lukashenko - District Party Committee's instructor - this distance is maintained between them and to this day. Lukashenko commands Belarus like of District Party Committee. Nazarbayev is a capitalist-predator, Lukashenko - socialist.
- Looks like it's really a routine working visit ...
- There is a main issue, which did not appear publicly: how Russia is going to change and what are the limits of democratization in Kazakhstan and Belarus? I would say, there is a complete incompatibility of personalistic genetic code. How to adapt to Russian democracy (although they are going to give two years to Navalny, but a political prisoner in Russia is the future president). But this is just little things. The main question is how to live further, how to adapt to different Russia? They've been presidents for 20 years - what next? Put their axes against Russia - it does not work, and Nazarbayev will not make it.
