Author Archive

Paul Hansbury

Paul Hansbury is an associate fellow with the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations, an associate analyst with the Ostrogorski Centre, an affiliate of the GCRF COMPASS research project (led by the University of Kent), and a member of the editorial team for the peer-reviewed Journal of Belarusian Studies. He received his DPhil in International Relations and MSc in Russian and East European Studies from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

On 17 November 2019 Belarus chooses a new parliament. The last parliamentary elections, held in September 2016, brought two non-loyalist candidates into the lower chamber for the first time in more than a decade. Although the role of the parliament is relatively insignificant in the Belarusian political system, the outcome of the poll later this month will send an important signal about Belarus’s domestic trajectory. Moreover, the international response could determine the direction of travel for Belarus’s relations with Russia and Western states as it moves towards presidential elections in August 2020. 2016: A confidence trick? Elections in Belarus usually provide few surprises and critics fairly dismiss parliamentary ballots as inconsequential affairs. In the earlier part of his rule, President …