Two new parties are being created in Belarus, one aimed at closer integration with Russia

Yuri Vaskrasensky, who attended a meeting between authoritarian President Aliaksandr Lukashenko and opposition leaders at the Belarusian KGB pre-trial detention center last fall, said activists from the protest movement were forming a new party.

“The organizing committee of the party is already operational, an initiative group is being formed. As far as I know, 2-3 people come to the meeting every day and express their desire to resume legal political activity. This party will mainly support each other. on the activists of the protest movement who stopped in time, “Vaskrasensky said on ONT television on Wednesday.

J. Vaskrasenksis is a businessman, one of the members of the initiative group of the former candidate for the presidency of Belarus Viktor Babaryka to collect the necessary signatures for the candidacy. He was released from the detention center when Lukashenko met with detained representatives of the Coordination Council established by the opposition and the United Opposition Headquarters on October 10 last year at the KGB detention center. Currently, J. Vaskrasenskis describes himself as the founder of the organization “Round Table of Democratic Forces”.

Opposition leader Sviatlana Cichanouskaja, who left Lithuania after the presidential elections, previously said she would not participate in “initiatives of political impostors” and did not recommend other democratic forces to do the same.

At the time, Hleb Volkav, a member of the presidium of the union’s organizing committee (Sajuz), said that he would work with his comrades to establish a political force that would advocate for closer integration with Russia and represent a union.

“The need for such a party has been felt for a long time in society. It has probably been 20 years since Aliaksandras Ryhoravičius [Lukašenka] is in power, it was he who represented the union leadership. Today, you see, it happened that we were somehow focused, and this direction can also be represented on the lower level. “It is not only the government that has to represent the union,” he told the ONT on Wednesday.

Mr. Volkava clarified that by referring to the union leadership, he was referring to the union of Belarus and Russia.

He also claimed that the parties established in Belarus in the 1990s have already been exhausted.

As of July 1, 2020, 15 political parties and 1,198 party organizations were registered in Belarus.

In Belarus there have been unprecedented protests for more than half a year over the presidential election on August 9, which has been declared won by Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994. The opposition and Western countries consider these elections to be rigged .

The Belarusian authorities have arrested a chain of opposition leaders, some of whom have been forced to leave the country. The protesters demand the resignation of Lukashenko, the release of political prisoners and new elections. As the power structures fiercely repressed the protests, they moved from the streets to the courtyards and are taking place in various districts of Minsk.