Against the background of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the engineered migration crisis on the European Union (EU)-Belarus borders became much less visible. Yet, subversive activity also carried on as the Polish border guard continued to report having turned back dozens of people from Africa and Asia trying to cross the border into the EU. This weaponisation of migration undertaken by the regime in Belarus should be understood in a much broader context and placed alongside other authoritarian strategies, capitalising on various vulnerabilities. In this sense, it is not dissimilar, for example, from Moscow‘s tactic of threatening the world with a global food crisis with the interruption of grain supplies from Ukraine. Dictatorial regimes use these vulnerabilities and, coupled with the power of the modern media, stage morbid and terrifying shows for a global audience. These authoritarian spectacles are meant to emotionally sway the public, weaken elected governments, and blackmail democratic societies into compliance with authoritarian goals. This analysis will focus on the examination of how authoritarian regimes exploit the various vulnerabilities of the contemporary world, with particular attention to energy and food interdependence, ‘whataboutisms’, and the Belarus-Poland border crisis.