Reuters today features an interview with the apparently omni-disgruntled Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who seems to be exuberantly alienating old allies and potential new ones, with trenchant criticism of both Russia and the West.

“I cannot even talk about all the steps that I have taken that are very sensitive for us — and the West cast me aside,” said Lukashenko, who is under Western pressure for political reform and broader civil rights in Belarus.

“I have come to understand that there is a huge number of irresponsible politicians in the West,” he said.

Meanwhile Lukashenko is investing heavily in defending the ousted President of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, (who he has rather histrionically vowed to shelter) and, as today’s Moscow Times reports, courting distant Venezuela for oil imports as a show of energy independence from Russia.