Kaspar Pucek is a Research Fellow within the Security Unit and the Russia & Eastern Europe Centre (CREEC) at the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague. His research focuses on the political economy, politics, and geopolitics of Russia and the wider former Soviet bloc (Poland and Ukraine in particular), as well as on Sino-Russian relations. In addition to his work at Clingendael, he is also a Lecturer in International Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University, a guest lecturer in International Relations and Diplomacy at Leiden University, and a Teaching Fellow with the Europaeum at the University of Oxford. Kaspar has also been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Institutional Studies at HSE University (Higher School of Economics) in Moscow. He holds a Ph.D. in contemporary Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European history from Princeton University.

Policy Project: Rethinking the EU’s Belarus Policy: The Opportunities, Limits, and Tradeoffs of a Pragmatic Turn

The EU’s Belarus policy has hit a dead end. Attempts to democratize the Belarusian political system have failed, while Western sanctions have substantially increased Minsk’s dependence on Moscow. Given that democratization through negative conditionality has proven ineffective while dangerously undermining the existence of Belarus as a sovereign state independent from Russia, my project explores a more pragmatic policy strategy focused on maximizing Minsk’s geopolitical autonomy vis-à-vis Moscow. It focuses on two key questions. Firstly, what policy instruments does the EU have to increase the geopolitical autonomy of Belarus? And secondly, what are the tradeoffs involved in applying these instruments at different moments in time – specifically: right away, after the war in Ukraine ends, and after President Lukashenko leaves the political stage? By mapping the opportunities, limits, and tradeoffs of such a policy strategy, my project aims to provide European policymakers with a roadmap for devising a more effective Belarus policy.