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The highest crusade of the competitive presidential elections in Belarus in decades has noticed a wave of discontent opposed to the authoritarian leader of the Eastern European country coinciding with a dramatic escalation of tensions with Russia.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, 65, is his sixth term after being in force since 1994.
The opposition joined Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, 37, who, although she was first reluctant to pursue her husband, was prevented from running and imprisoned by the authorities, yet she made the decision to challenge Lukashenko.
The Belarusian electoral commission prevented two other political rivals from running against the president.One of them, Viktor Babariko, 56, was imprisoned on the false accusations of his supporters.
The other, Valery Tsepkalo, 55, fled to Russia after alleged reports from security officials warned that he could soon be arrested and stripped of his paternity rights.
Voters will vote on Sunday.
“This deserves attention because a scenario in Ukraine has led to a global geopolitical confrontation,” Christopher Granville, managing director of the EMEA region and global political studies at TS Lombard, told CNBC by phone to CNBC.
The “big difference” between Belarus and Ukraine, he argued, was that when Kiev endured a strong leader amid the lack of popular aid in 2014, Russia was fully aware of the diplomatic language used at a 2008 NATO summit that declared Ukraine.and Georgia would become members of the army alliance.
“Therefore, the signal to Russia was very transparent that, at the first opportunity, the Americans will return Ukraine to NATO,” Granville said.In 2014, Russia acted incredibly temporarily to protect what it thought was its important interests.”
While the NATO context is not the same with respect to Belarus, Granville has made it clear that the upcoming elections “could end badly.”He warned that it was “absolutely realistic” to foresee a situation in which Lukashenko would falsify the result of the vote to claim victory and orchestrate a “brutal” reaction through security forces to suppress mass protests.
“This may be a general revolution in Central and Eastern Europe,” Granville said.
The Belarusian government responded to a request for comment when it was contacted through CNBC.
Before the vote, the Belarusian government arrested more than 30 suspected Russian mercenaries accusing them of planning terrorist acts to destabilize the country.
Russia has ignored the accusations, it is not easy for Belarus to release security contractors.
The Belarus State Security Committee said Wednesday that it had arrested 32 workers from the secret army organization use Russian Wagner outside Minsk, along with some other user arrested in the south of the country.
The Belarus 1 state television channel broadcast footage of Russian arrest near the capital last week.
The head of The Belarusian security council also said the government would look for another 200 Russian mercenaries suspected of entering the country to cause civil unrest before the election.
“The vote has been strangely competitive due to widespread popular discontent with Lukashenko’s economy and mismanagement of coronavirus,” Daragh McDowell, Head of Europe and senior Russian analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.
As a result, McDowell said lukashenko made “increasingly forceful statements of foreign interference, leading to barely veiled threats of mass repression, while his force control is less stable.”
The former leader of Belarus, described as “Europe’s last dictator,” has refused to put in place blocking restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead, he allegedly told Belarusians to drink vodka, move on to the saunas and return to work.The president also stated that other countries had imposed restrictive measures to curb Covid-19 as an act of “frenzy and psychosis.”
Lukashenko said last week that Covid-19 had become stuck and had recovered by appearing some symptoms.
To date, more than 68,000 Covid-19 infections have been reported in Belarus, with 567 similar deaths, according to knowledge compiled through Johns Hopkins University.
Analysts told CNBC that while lack of knowledge about the surveys made it difficult to perceive the consensus of the electorate, there is really extensive evidence that the government’s reaction to coronavirus is one of the main drivers of civil unrest.
“It’s all very murky,” Timothy Ash, senior emerging market strata from Bluebay Asset Management, told CNBC.
He argued that cold diplomatic relations between Washington and Minsk had been “warmed up” in recent months, noting that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Belarus this year.
It is the first time a U.S. secretary of state has visited the country for approximately 9.5 million people in 26 years.At a joint press convention with Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei on February 1, Pompeo said the United States is ready to provide Minsk with all the “All you have to do is call us,” he said at the time.
Pompeo did not lift the sanctions that opposed the visit of senior Belarusian officials.The measures were launched in 2006 amid considerations of free and fair elections and human rights violations.
However, Belarus’ relationship with its classic ally Russia has deteriorated. Before the vote, Ash said that it gave the impression that Moscow has supported the opposition in overthrowing the leader of Belarus for a long time.
On the occasion Lukashenko guaranteed that the opposition would lose the vote, Ash wondered whether the prospect of more protests could side with Moscow, while the UNITED States ends up inadvertently supporting Lukashenko.
“The global is upside down,” he said.
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