Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is still in India where she fled to save her life following the spree of urban terrorism that broke out this summer and ultimately toppled her government. Reports earlier claimed that she sought to seek asylum in the UK, but its Home Office soon thereafter clarified that “Those who need international protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach—that is the fastest route to safety”, thus likely scuttling those plans.
It was around that time that other reports began to emerge suggesting that she might instead go to Belarus, Finland, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE since few expect her to remain in India due to how much that could impede Delhi’s attempts to cultivate pragmatic ties with Dhaka’s interim administration. Of the four aforesaid countries, Belarus would be the best one since Finland might not be able to protect her from retributive violence while the two Gulf Kingdoms might not want to ruin their ties with Bangladesh.
Belarus doesn’t have significant ties with her country, plus it has excellent security services as proven by their continued protection of former Polish judge Tomasz Szmidt, who that neighboring country’s intelligence agencies declared to be a traitor and are trying to kill. While some might wonder why she’s not considering Russia, the answer could be that it might politely decline out of concern that hosting her could create the pretext for Bangladesh’s interim administration to pull out of mutually beneficial deals.
The “New Rules” podcast reminded everyone on X that “Rosatom has a $12.65 billion contract to build the Ruppur nuclear power plant; Russia’s wheat exports reached a record 2.7 million tons in 2023; Russia-Bangladesh trade turnover increased by 16.5% and reached $2.7 billion in 2023; and Gazprom has designed and built 20 gas wells in Bangladesh over the past decade”. It’s predictable that the interim administration’s US-backed leader could exploit her asylum in Russia as the pretext to curtail those ties.
Muhammad Yunus was a Fulbright Scholar in 1965, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and was given a Congressional Gold Medal the year after in 2010. He also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, which is a largely politicized process as astute observers know. Additionally, Yunus was accused of committing financial crimes and was convicted in absentia earlier this year of violating labor laws, though he predictably pleaded innocent and claimed that this was a conspiracy against him.
For as close as he is to the US, there’s also only so much that he could realistically do with regard to distancing Bangladesh from Russia. After all, their planned nuclear power plant is already under construction and can’t easily be canceled, while his country veritably needs Russian wheat. Even so, it’s understandable that Russia might not want to risk the interim administration’s opprobrium and take the chance that they’d capitulate to American demands to sacrifice their own interests in advance of its own.
With this insight in mind, and recalling what was shared earlier about why Finland would be an unsafe place for her to apply for asylum while the Gulf Kingdoms might reject her application for political reasons, Belarus is the best bet. It’s much safer than Finland, more politically realistic than the Gulf Kingdoms who don’t want to complicate their ties with the interim administration, and very friendly with Russia and India, who support her but also feel the same way about this as the Gulf Kingdoms do.
