Quote Originally Posted by kaur View Post
Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy?
I suspect it has a lot to do with fear that any move to replace him could get out of control and put a pro-western government in... the old "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" attitude.

Of course if Putin comes out of the Ukraine mess feeling very confident, he might try destabilizing Lukashenko to create a pretext for outright annexation, but that is of course very speculative.