It is quite understandable why President Biden declined to meet with the visiting political opposition leader from Belarus the other day.
‘After all, she is no superstar Tom Brady, with whom he did meet.
But the real reason for the snub of the exiled political leader is because her name is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and we all know what Biden would have done with that moniker.
He would have butchered it.
Tsikhanouskaya may not be the brand of happy talk Tom Brady invites, but who among us is?
Biden, 78, had no problem remembering Brady’s name at the White House ceremony honoring the Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady has a name made for a bumper sticker. Tsikhanouskaya? Not so much.
Just imagine what would have happened had Biden attempted to introduce Tsikhanouskaya at a joint televised press conference before the White House press corps. The groans would have been heard around the world.
And that is before taking questions.
And truth be told, the reporters would not have fared much better considering the lack of television media coverage Tsikhanouskaya’s visit received.
Television talking heads could not pronounce her name correctly either.
And it is a shame because Tsikhanouskaya, 39, is the now exiled leader of the embattled opposition party that sought to oust longtime authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko following the questionable and disputed August 2020 election.
As in Cuba, Lukashenko, a dictator and a Vladimir Putin puppet, has launched a massive crackdown on dissidents. Media outlets have been shut down, journalists arrested and leaders of human rights and civic groups jailed.
Just another day in another communist/socialist paradise.
Belarus is a small, landlocked country in eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania and Latvia.
Tsikhanouskaya, an English teacher and interpreter, replaced her husband as a presidential candidate after he, Sergei, a pro-democracy activist, was arrested and imprisoned for speaking out.
Fearing retribution, Sviatlana, following the questionable results of the election, fled to Lithuania with her two children.
It was Lukashenko, you will recall, who sent a MiG jet fighter to force the landing of a Ryanair commercial flight over Belarus that was flying from Greece to Lithuania in May. He did it to arrest passenger Raman Pratasevich, a dissenting Belarus journalist who is now in prison.
While Biden and European Union leaders condemned Lukashenko’s act of air piracy and promised to hold him accountable, nothing came of it and nothing will. Yet Biden did applaud the courage of the journalist and the Tsikhanouskayas for standing up to Lukashenko.
“The United States will continue to stand with the people of Belarus in their struggle,” Biden said at the time.
Well, nothing happened then, and nothing will happen now, despite Tsikhanouskaya’s plea for help.
The Biden administration is all talk.
Biden will “stand” with the people in Belarus seeking freedom and democracy just as it is “standing up” for the beleaguered Ukrainians or the Cubans protesting the communist dictatorship in Cuba.
Biden may have increased sanctions on Cuba but he turned his back on accepting Cuban refugees fleeing communism while opening the southern border to everyone else illegally crashing into the country.
Biden may be doing a lot of “standing up” these days, but one group he is not standing up for are the thousands of American workers who lost their jobs after he shut down the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
While Biden did campaign on the slogan of Build Back Better, he was not talking about the United States, he was talking about Russia.
That is why he lifted Donald Trump’s sanctions that halted the completion of the Russian Nord Stream 2 undersea pipeline that, in addition to creating Russian jobs, will supply natural gas from Russia to Germany. It will make Germany, our NATO ally, a captive of Russian energy.
Maybe, as in Afghanistan, the time has come to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany and let the Germans defend themselves for a change.
While American forces were in Afghanistan for 20 years, the U.S. has had an army in Germany protecting it from a Russian invasion since the end of World War II, which is almost 80 years ago.
Some of this may not appear to have much to do with Ms. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Belarus. But it does.
When you hear Joe Biden say he will stand up for you, head for the door.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
