András Németh

Mass protests continue in Belarus over the August 9 presidential elections, with tens of thousands of people marching in Minsk and other cities on Sunday to demand the departure of President Alexander Lukashenko. There were also demonstrations on Saturday, when hundreds of protesting women were detained, a great-grandmother, Nyina Bahinskaya, was also taken away.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko sent his 16-year-old son Nikolai, and probably his chosen successor, to safety in Moscow.

The favorite boy has been enrolled in an elite residential school, according to Russian newspaper reports, is under the pseudonym Nikolai and will live in a guest room at the Belarusian embassy in Moscow. It used to be that the boy was studying in one of the EU member states, or the United States, but Lukashenko probably rightly thinks that his son will now be better off enjoying the hospitality of his persistent ally, Russia.

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Lukashenko has taken his son with him to almost every major event in recent years, and Nikolai, dressed in a military uniform, also appeared in the infamous video from late August, in which Lukashenko, running unloaded with a submachine gun and Flying in a helicopter, try to capture the appearance of your tough driver. By the way, it seems that Nikolai, raised in a holster, does not want as much power as his father would like, even before the elections, the head of state declared that his son “opposes all kinds of power in principle”.

But at the moment, Lukashenko is not thinking about a long-term transfer of power, but about how to consolidate his very unstable situation in recent weeks. According to official results, which have undoubtedly been highly cosmetic, the wave of protests that began on the eve of the election of the former Soviet president, who has been in power since 1994, won 80 percent. Demonstrations are common, several companies continue to close and more than 100,000 people attend the gigantic demonstrations on Sunday. Police acted relatively restrained on Sunday: Although riot police occupied the city center, this time uniforms arrested only a few dozen people.

Eroded power base

Although the opposition is not yet strong enough to seize power, the stalemate that has been going on for a month and a half is gradually eroding Lukashenko’s power base. There are several indications that more and more people within Minsk’s political leadership want Lukashenko to leave (the number of former confidants openly opposing the head of state is growing) and the politician is also concerned that he has no new means to marginalize to the opposition.

With massive arrests and ill-treatment of detainees, the regime only reaffirmed the determination of the protesters this time, nor did it help arrest or force members of the Coordinating Council, which organized opposition movements, abroad. The determination of the protesters is reinforced by the fact that one of the members of the opposition body, Maxim Znak, who has been accused of endangering state security, has gone on a hunger strike. “This is my only chance to show how absurd it is to sue people for their freedom of expression,” Znak told the world through his lawyer.

For Lukashenko, the last chance is to force a more serious intervention in Moscow, as Russian President Vladimir Putin promised in mid-August – and the two confirmed in the Moscow talks on September 14 – that the agreement establishing a The Russian-Belarusian federal state is also ready to provide military assistance to its western neighbor if it is threatened by a foreign attack or if the protests are ruined.

The Minsk leader is also working to show that NATO and especially Poland and Lithuania are preparing for aggression. He reiterates that NATO is gathering troops on the western borders of the country and that the West supports the opposition because it wants to destabilize Belarus before the military attack. Lukashenko ordered the closure of the border sections between Poland and Lithuania at the end of the week, but traffic has remained stable for now, and Polish and Lithuanian authorities say there are no signs that his neighbor is preparing for a closure. border: traffic is stable and no reinforcements have arrived in the area.

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Indirect success

Even if Lukashenko has so far failed to squeeze out Russian military intervention – Russian assistance so far to lend, strengthen equipment and people in the Belarusian authorities and state media, and plunder the West – he has achieved remarkably cautious Western responses. events in Belarus.

The sanctions imposed by the EU, which have not yet entered into force due to opposition from Cyprus, are very weak, and although the Belarusian opposition is demanding that the West recognize the candidate Svajlana Cihanouszka, who was forced into Lithuania against Lukashenko in August , as head of state, only in Brussels. that it no longer recognizes Lukashenko as a legitimate head of state in Belarus. Meanwhile, the OSCE and the UN have begun investigating evidence of police abuse and electoral fraud.



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