The european leader with the most years of service, Alexander Lukashenko, has worked hard to seem invincible.He has ruled beyond elections that the United States has considered neither loose nor fair, and has not negotiated any dissent and suppressed the protests.Today, he faces an unprecedented challenge as he is running for a sixth term for the presidency of Belarus in the nine August elections.A former political instructor and rookie, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has her main rival, pleding to overthrow Lukashenko’s regime and repair democracy.
Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Belarus in some of the country’s largest opposition protests in a decade, amid growing frustration at the government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, combined with complaints about the economy.Referring to Lukashenko, the protesters chanted “Stop the sadness” and maintained symptoms that said “change!”
“For the first time in 26 years of government, Lukashenko knows that the majority is not him,” Aleksandr Feduta, a former assistant to the outgoing president, told TIME that he was imprisoned after receiving an opposition candidate in 2010.
The United States, France, Germany and Poland have called on Belarus to guarantee free and fair elections, but analysts are unlikely to happen and expect Lukashenko to win through fraudulent votes and votes, says Katia Glod, an indefinite expert in Belarus., however, their unrest will not end in a victory.It will face economic difficulties, developing discontent at home, controlling the country’s strained relations with Russia, and condemning the West if the crackdown on complaints continues.
Lukashenko, a 65-year-old former collective farm manager, has ruled the former Soviet country of 9.5 million more people since 1994.Dubbed “Europe’s Last Dictatorship” by George W.’s administration.Bush in 2005, Lukashenko’s regime imprisoned opposition leaders, suppressing public opinion.conducted “severely flawed” elections, which resulted in sanctions across the United States and the European Union since 2004.Belarus is also the only country in Europe that has been sentenced to death, with maximum executions taking a position in the lead.they are not informed of the date of execution and knowledge of the death penalty is considered state secret; however, according to Amnesty International, more than 400 people have been executed since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Reliable opinion polls are difficult to obtain, however, a survey conducted through the Institute of Sociology has put Lukashenko’s approval rate at 24%.Analysts say Lukashenko has weakened this year due to his mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, which he has called “psychosis” that can be cured with vodka and a sauna stop despite the recent contraction of the disease.He refused to impose a blockade on the virus that inflames more than 68,000 people and killed 574 residents, according to Johns Hopkins University.”The official line that the virus does not exist and that the Ministry of Health has been more or less forced to remain silent,” Glod says.He made many mistakes. People have had to deal with the crisis in their own,” Feduta says.
Discontent has been boiling for years. A ten-year economic stagnation and customers for additional economic integration with Russia, which many noted as a risk to Belarusian sovereignty, have weakened Lukashenko’s symbol as guarantor of stability.
Belarus relies on reasonable Russian power and lending to its largely state-controlled economy, but over the next year, the Kremlin puts more pressure on Belarus, increasing energy costs and cutting subsidies.integration if it sought to continue to gain advantages from Russia’s declining energy costs.In recent years, Lukashenko has rejected a number of Moscow proposals for closer integration, adding a single currency and joint legislative initiatives.
Tikhanovskaya, 38, only intensified her efforts after her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular YouTuber who led demonstrations against the regime, was arrested and banned from registering in May.
The Belarus electoral commission prevented two other political rivals from opposing the president: Viktor Babaryko was arrested in June for what his supporters call false accusations and Valery Tsepkalo, the country’s former ambassador to Washington, fled to Russia after alleged reports from security officials.can be arrested and stripped of his homeland. Amnesty International has called men “prisoners of conscience” who have been prosecuted for their political views.Tikhanovskaya sent her children to live temporarily, after receiving threats, they would be taken unless she left the race, an opposition journalist said.
Working as a team with Veronika Tsepkalo, the wife of Valery Tsepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova, Babaryko’s crusader manager, Tikhanovskaya has amassed record crowds across the country for her crusade “a country to live” (the same call as her husband’s blog), which promises to lose “Protests rarely take outdoor position in Minsk.The fact that they are nationally shows how strong the preference that other people need to change is,” Glod says.
Police responded with brutal tactics, arresting more than 1,000 protesters this summer alone, according to Minsk-based human rights organization Viasna.
In a dramatic turn, Belarusian police arrested 33 men on 29 July who believed they were Russian mercenaries sent to destabilize the stage before the election and then accused Tikhanovskaya’s husband and another prominent critic, Mikola Statkevich, of participating with the mercenaries.In his energetic speech to the country on 4 August, Lukashenko claimed that the arrested men had confessed to being sent to Belarus to “wait for instructions” and promised Belarus the war parties he described as “puppeteers” controlled by foreign forces..
Russia has denied any relationship with the detainees, who according to investigators belonged to the Wagner Group, an army contractor allegedly controlled through a best friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and who sold Moscow’s foreign policy objectives in Ukraine, Syria, Lithuania and other countries.Zakharova, spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on 4 August that there was no evidence of the men’s guilt and accused Belarus of setting up an exhibition before the vote.
Wagner’s mercenaries pass through Minsk, supposedly in the direction of Sudan, Syria, Libya and other countries, said Matthew Frear, a Belarusian expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who describes the arrest as a “perorata” to paint Lukashenko as a protector of Belarus under threat.”Putin doesn’t like Lukashenko at all. But I would say Putin would prefer a weakened Lukashenko to remain in force rather than the unknown of protests or revolution,” he says.”This was done with the aim of intimidating, electorating and opening up new criminal prosecutions against imprisoned opposition leaders,” Glod says.
Lukashenko’s battles will not end with his almost certain victory in fraudulent elections.Protesters don’t aim to back down,” says Glod, “The momentum is there and other people are in a position to change.”Feduta warns, however, that the regime is in a position to use force to silence dissent.
A weakened Lukashenko will localize the Kremlin’s influence much more. “If you want to repress dissent, you will lose the possibility of turning to the West, leaving you without selection yet to paint with Moscow,” says Frear.
The rise of Tikhanovskaya has obviously shown that Belarusians are hunting further west than to the east, Says Glod.”They need democracy, the rule of law and European values.Belarus is not a marigot country as has been perceived so far” Lukashenko’s regime will yield in one way or another.In the meantime, the EU will live next door to a country caught up in a very deep political crisis,” he says.