The streets of Minsk, bathed in the September morning sun, were surely empty yesterday, not a soul under the transparent blue sky. A shift towards tough anti-Covid policies?Of course not.
The real explanation for why Aleksandr Lukashenko had to be reinstated as president – weeks earlier – and in secret.
Lukashenko’s regime shuddered for nearly two months of street protests following an election in which he faced Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whose husband had imprisoned to take him out of the race.
The trick was ridiculous: observers searched a middle-aged woman coming down a ladder in front of a polling station with bags of leftover ballots (a plan to fill out the ballots was resolved when too many voters showed up and an area had to be created for their votes. ), and no one believed in 80% of officially registered votes. These abandoned streets of Minsk had to be filled by everyone who voted for it.
Lukashenko’s regime, in position since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and so report that its security service is still called KGB, is very vulnerable.
The regime’s thugs first responded to nonviolent protests with excessive violence, but found that women’s protests were much harder to contain. Men in hoods ripped protesters off the streets, but, as expected, protests are only growing.
Vladimir Putin has presented the Belarusian regime with $1. 5 billion, and perhaps secret aid for the fight against unrest, but appears to have subsidized far from more decisive intervention. Although he manipulated his own constitutional referendum to allow him to remain beyond the limits of the mandate, He had included in the last edition of Russia’s Basic Law, Putin dissenting against the ropes. Covid has particularly reduced the call for oil and gas, while protests have taken off, not only in Moscow, but also in the country. fleeing one of these protests, in Siberia, which Alexei Navalny collapsed after poisoning in Novichok. The last thing Russia wants now is some other insurgent province.
In those revolutionary times, the survival of the regime is based on the projection of a sense of “inevitability”, Rob Thomas, an analyst from Eastern Europe, tells me. Legitimacy has long been lost and the state does not have the capacity for total repression. to suppress such an uprising. The most productive thing you can hope to do is watch the protesters and hope the bloodless of winter can send them home.
As much as Putin and Lukashenko may need for their own propaganda that this revolution is a conspiracy of the CIA or George Soros, it is in fact a national motion to overthrow a leader who is not responsible and who has exceeded their welcome. The replacement comes from the interior of Belarus. Our task is to keep you in the spotlight outside.
In addition, what could simply be called the toolkit: applying Magnitsky sanctions to regime-related figures, taking strong anti-money laundering measures, preventing the export of Internet surveillance and censorship generation, and expanding civil society investment through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. are express things that can put pressure on Lukashenko’s regime.
First of all, Belarus has a strangely efficient generation sector, responsible for more than 5% of GDP. These charts can be made anywhere, so that we can help Belarusian companies and programmers put legal structures in place to maintain their income in the open air Belarus as they proceed. to the paintings where they are. Taxes due on this activity can be accepted as true and passed to Belarus after free and fair elections are held.
Secondly, visas deserve to be comfortable to allow Belarusians wishing to paint and examine coming to the UK and also to establish businesses with minimal red tape, on the same terms as the Ankara agreement used for Turkey.
Thirdly, to weaken Russia’s power weapon, we will have to work with Lithuania specifically to allow pipelines to Belarus to be invested and, in combination with other democracies, to provide monetary promises for the sending of liquefied herbal fuel to a Belarusian transitional government.
Fourth, if more tension is needed to create tension for a transition to free and fair elections, we can simply recognize Tikhanovskaya as the acting valid president, as a component of a negotiating procedure that would allow Lukashenko to withdraw in favor of a democratic figure.
Empty streets and secret opening show that, despite Cyprus’ blocking of EU sanctions (an action actually independent of the gigantic amounts of Russian cash deposited in its banks), Lukashenko is afraid. If economic pressure on the regime increases, we can play our part in supporting belarusians’ struggle for their own future.
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