Svyatlana Tsikhanowskaya urges Poland to keep the Belarus border open, warning against a “new iron curtain”.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/6ffZv
Problem is, Putin owns Belarus, and he’s a cunt.
Sure, she’s right, more people in Belarus voted for her than Lukas* and his pals, they shouldn’t suffer for p’s tricks, although it seems to me the majority are rather too passive (with some great exceptions, of course).
Anyway isn’t there another factor here - are there still long freight trains with chinese containers frequently arriving in Brest? If not, how else are they getting to europe? If so, I’d guess both belarus railways and polish lorry drivers get a lot of money out of that trade, isn’t that a factor of leverage ?
Belarus is good at trains, I hope not so far in the future we’ll see them run again from Odesa to Riga via Minsk, and with people free to move.Europe is moving away from the track gauge used by Russia/Belarus, so it’s less of a factor now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-European_Transport_Network
Ukraine is huge and has loads of track and trains that gauge, so do Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova. There’s even a ukrainian-gauge line running west to Katowice, could make sense to extend it, and make another to Gdansk. Otoh a transversal standard-gauge line connecting Romania to Poland via Chernivtsi and Lviv could also make sense.
Western europe should welcome the technical expertise of Ukraine and Belarus railways, they move a lot, efficiently.
Hey, not so long ago, there was even talk of a canal linking the Dnipro to the Wisla, recreating the old ‘viking rus’ trade-route (although have to consider also impact on wetlands… I recall used to sit next to the IPCC rep from Belarus - he was passionate about methane emissions from wetlands - but suffered from politics …)
