MINSK, Belarus – The authoritarian president of Belarus made a dramatic demonstration of defiance on the Sunday opposed to the protests and it was not easy to resign, dressed in a rifle and bulletproof vest as he descended from a helicopter that landed on his as the demonstrators concentrated nearby.
On the fifteenth day of the largest and highest demonstrations ever held in independent Belarus, a crowd of around 200,000 people piled up against President Alexander Lukashenko in a square in Minsk, the capital. Then they went to another rally and approached the Independence Palace, the residence of the president.
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A video from official news firm Belta showed a government helicopter landing on the floor and Lukashenko descending with the impression of being an automatic Kalashnikov rifle. No visual ammunition clip on the weapon, suggesting that Lukashenko, who cultivates an aura of machismo, was only intended to demonstrate aggression.
The protests began on August 9 after a presidential election that officials say approved lukashenko, 65, his sixth term with the approval of 80% of the electorate. Opponents say the effects are fraudulent.
The scale and duration of the protests are unprecedented in Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 9.5 million more people that Lukashenko has ruled hard for 26 years.
On Sunday afternoon, an opposition demonstration extended to Minsk’s sprawling 17-acre independence square. There were no official figures on the length of the crowd, however, there will be about 200,000 people or more.
The protesters then marched to another square a mile away and approached the edges of the pre-spect field, where cops with the full team stood side by side, holding giant shields.
Protesters dispersed into the night in the rain.
There were no immediate reports of arrests. Earlier this month, another 7,000 people were arrested in protests, many of them severely beaten with sticks or rubber gunshot wounds, a violence that only deepened public outrage.
Lukashenko appears to be suffering from a strategy to counter anti-government protests.
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He continually blamed Western interference, claimed that the protests were supported across the United States, and accused NATO of increasing troop concentrations in Poland and Lithuania on the western border of Belarus, which the alliance denies. He also said Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a position to offer security assistance to his government to suppress protests upon request.
Lukashenko has consistently suppressed the opposition, his mandate and tiredness with his radical rule, as well as dismay at the deterioration of the country’s economy and Lukashenko’s arrogant rejection of the coronavirus pandemic, seem to have galvanized opponents.
“Belarus has changed. Lukashenko has managed to unify everyone from intellectuality in calling for change,” said protester Slava Chirkov, who attended Sunday’s demonstration with his wife and son.
They held a sign “Lukashenko, your milk went wrong,” referring to his former position as director of a Soviet-era collective farm.
“Are you going to paint for a dictator? Strike, that’s our response,” Sergei Dilevsky, head of a strike committee at the Minsk tractor factory, one of Belarus’s largest commercial companies, told protesters at the location of the Sunday rally.
SHOW SUPPORT
Also on Sunday, more than 50,000 Lithuanians joined forces in a human chain stretching 20 miles from the capital of Vilinus, on the border with Belarus, to stand in solidarity with their neighbors’ dramatic struggle for democracy.
The occasion, called the “Road to Freedom”, resembled the historic occasion of 23 August 1989, when more than one million people in the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania shaped the Baltic Way, a human chain stretching from Vilnius to Tallinn. to call for an end to the Soviet occupation.
Sunday’s message is similar: the people of Belarus deserve free, fair and democratic elections.
“Thirty years ago, Lithuania broke the chains of oppression, appearing as the global thing we are on the loose and, above all, loose in our minds. Today is the time for our Belarusian brothers to say the word “freedom,” said Lithuanian President Gitanas Náuseda.
He was one of many prominent Lithuanians who joined the event, along with former Presidents Valdas Adamkus and Dalia Grybauskaite, diplomats and army officers from dozens of countries.
The data in this article was provided through Yuras Karmanau, Jim Heintz, Luida Dapkus and associated Press staff.