Lukashenko rewards security forces as Belarus protests

MINSK (Reuters) – Belarussian Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday handed out medals “for impeccable service” to lawmakers’ officials who helped him protest against protesters demanding his resignation in the 10 days since an election she says was stolen.

In an effort to strike at strikes that have hit some of the country’s most important factories, the government also gave a message to state-owned company executives telling them to make sure workers fulfill their duties or are disciplined.

Lukashenko is under the greatest pressure from his 26-year rule, with no sign of an end to the protests and strikes over the elections, which the president says he won with 80 percent of the vote, but Protestants say it is blatant rigged wie.

At least two Protestants have been killed and thousands arrested in the run-up to the election. Many of the detainees have complained about punishment, harsh conditions and starvation rations.

Opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya says she was the rightful winner.

Tsikhanouskaya, who only emerged as the consensus opposition candidate only after a number of others, including her husband, were imprisoned or barred from standing, fled abroad, and Internet conversations were sent to her followers to stand up. to go.

Hundreds of protesters singing “shame” gathered in a theater in Minsk on Tuesday in solidarity with its director, who was fired for speaking out in support of the opposition.

They were later to be reunited in a prison where Tsikhanouskaya’s husband has been detained since late May. Tuesday is his birthday.

“RAT SYSTEM”

“All this scandalous, unjustified lawlessness shows us how this rotten system works, where one person controls everything,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a video on Tuesday.

“One man has kept the country in fear for 26 years. “One man stole the choice of Belarusians,” she said.

Attention is firmly focused on how Russia will respond to the biggest political crisis a former Soviet neighbor has had in Ukraine since 2014, when Moscow intervened militarily after an allied leader was killed by public protests was.

Of all the former Soviet republics, Belarus is the closest to Russia in terms of culture, politics and economics, with a treaty declaring the two countries part of a ‘unity state’ with a Soviet-style red flag. But President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko have had a difficult personal relationship.

European officials privately say that the situation in Belarus is different from that in Ukraine six years ago, in part because the opposition in Belarus is not necessarily trying to loosen ties with Russia, only to lose Lukashenko.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron both spoke by telephone to Putin on Tuesday. The Kremlin said Putin had both warned against foreign mediation in Belarus’ affairs.

The European Union is ready to impose new sanctions on Balrus officials over the collapse, and is also looking for ways to promote a negotiated solution.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde talks by telephone with Belarus’ Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei. Linde invited Minsk to visit in her role as incoming chairman of the OSCE, a security body that includes both Western countries and former Soviet states, and often mediates in the region.

The election protests were further fueled by public outrage over Lukashenko’s treatment of the coronavirus pandemic, which he dismissed as a ‘psychosis’, and economic grievances involving swathes of Belarusian society.

The president was worked on Monday by manufacturers and has faced opposition from people who are normally seen as loyal. The Belarusian ambassador to Slovakia and four other diplomats were dismissed in support of the protesters.

A coordination board led by Tsikhanouskaya to facilitate a transition of power was thanked later on Tuesday in Minsk for the first time.