Since 2014, Putin has been doing his best to make the Russian economy sanction-proof. It won't completely work. The sanctions that are being imposed this week will hurt the Russian economy. But the sanction-proofing efforts (mostly a huge reserve of foreign cash, a move away from foreign debt, and a big bet on income from oil and gas on the theory that the world economy is too dependent on them to ever be directly sanctioned) will blunt some of the pain on Russia.
Belarus has not tried to sanction-proof its economy. The country was never as integrated with the global economy as Russia is, so that will make sanctions a little less painful. But otherwise, it has none of the cash reserves that Russia can use to weather this storm, and it has a substantial amount of foreign debt. Also, and most importantly, it has no oil income. While in other circumstances Belarus might bet that Russia would bail them out if Western sanctions start to hurt, when Russia itself is trying to prop up its own economy, it is unlikely to provide much help for Belarus. So I wonder if Lukashenko has really thought this through.
