There have been other major protests against Lukashenko in Belarus



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In Belarus, large street protests against President Alexander Lukashenko continued for the fifth consecutive weekend. In the capital Minsk, more than 100,000 people demonstrated in the streets of the city center in front of the police deployed in riot gear. There were also demonstrations in other cities in the country, including Brest, Gomel, Grodna and Mogilev.

On Sunday the protesters, who waved the red and white flags of the pre-Soviet Belarusian republic, which have become a symbol of the protests, and demanded the resignation of the president, tried to deviate from the expected path of the march and reach the Drozhdy district , where it is located. the residence of Lukashenko and other high-ranking officials of the regime, but the police charged the march and prevented the change of route. At least 250 people were reportedly arrested. On Saturday another 114 people were arrested during a peaceful women’s march, also in the capital. Also during this weekend there was violence by the police against the protesters, as also witnessed by several videos disseminated on social networks.

Meanwhile, on Monday, September 14 in Sochi, Russia, Lukashenko will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since the August 9 presidential election, in which Lukashenko had obtained more than 80 percent of the vote, but that the opposition and the People who have been demonstrating in the square for more than a month, consider them rigged for fraud. The presidents of Russia and Belarus, which are friendly countries, bound by various types of treaties, including defense treaties, have spoken by phone several times in recent weeks.

On August 20, increasingly in difficulty due to massive anti-government protests, Lukashenko spoke to President Putin twice by phone, asking for his help. Putin had assured Lukashenko that Russia would provide “necessary assistance” to the Belarusian government in the face of external threats – a way of saying that Russia does not rule out the possibility of militarily intervening in Belarus if it deems it necessary.

In view of the meeting between the two presidents, the Russian Defense Ministry told Russia’s RIA news agency on Sunday that Russia will send troops from its paratrooper division to Belarus for joint military exercises to be held from 14 to 25. September. The ministry has made it clear that the Russian paratroopers will return to their homeland at the end of the exercises.

For now, Putin seems to want to confirm his support, including military support, for Lukashenko, though not with a direct intervention that would no doubt be harshly condemned by the international community. US Undersecretary of State Stephen Biegun warned the Kremlin on Friday that if it “continues on this path,” that is, supporting Lukashenko, it runs the risk of alienating the Belarusian people.

Putin’s support for Lukashenko has in fact become another target of protests by the protesters who march through the streets of Minsk every weekend. One of the slogans of Sunday’s protests was “We will not let them sell the country.” The oppositions fear that a weakened Lukashenko could allow Russia to take control of Belarus in exchange for military support to keep it in power.

At Monday’s meeting Putin and Lukashenko will have to confront their positions: on the one hand the Belarusian president needs the support of Russia, but does not want to cede excessive sovereignty to his powerful ally, on the other the Russian president wants to confirm loyalty to the Belarusian, but is aware that Lukashenko is a leader who seems to have no more popular support, and Putin does not want to appear complicit in the civil rights violations of recent weeks in Belarus in the eyes of the international community.

In addition to police violence during the demonstrations, all opposition leaders in Belarus were kidnapped, arrested or forced into exile. On Monday, September 7, one of the opposition leaders, Maria Kolesnikova, disappeared the day after another large demonstration. Some local sources had written that Kolesnikova had been abducted by men with her face covered in the center of Minsk and forced into a minivan.

On Thursday morning, Kolesnikova’s lawyer issued a statement, written by the activist, accusing the Belarusian secret services of kidnapping her and threatening her with death. In the same document, Kolesnikova asked that an investigation be opened into the violence suffered, expressing her willingness to testify, also indicating the names and roles of the agents who had committed the crimes. Kolesnikova had said that she was taken to the border with Ukraine, but that she managed not to be forcibly extradited by getting out of the car that was transporting her and breaking her passport. Now Kolesnikova is incarcerated in a remand center on suspicion of an attempted coup.

On Wednesday, Maxim Znak and Antonina Konovalova, two other members of the Belarusian opposition, were arrested in a manner similar to Kolesnikova on Monday. Also on Wednesday, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, a 2015 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, reported that hooded men had tried to enter her home.



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