KYIV, Ukraine – Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the capital of Belarus on Sunday, at the beginning of the fourth week of protests it was not easy to resign the country’s authoritarian president after an election they described as rigged and gave him a sixth term.
The demonstration opposed to the monument to the “city of heroes” in honor of the suffering and resistance of Minsk World War II attracted at least 100,000 people, according to the nexta courier channel, the opposition’s main means of communication.
Major protests began after the presidential election on August 9, which officials say gave President Alexander Lukashenko a crushing 80% victory over her main rival, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a former instructor and wife of a popular imprisoned blogger.
Lukashenko, in force since 1994, has been provocative but besathed, unable to quell the largest and highest wave of protests to date in the Eastern European country of 9. 5 million people. He refused to reactivate the elections, which the European Union and the United States stated was neither relaxed nor fair, and refused to provide assistance in mediating in the Baltic countries.
Lukashenko says he has reached an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia will send security aid if requested, but Russia is reluctant to worry deeply about the unrest in Belarus.
Putin and Lukashenko spoke by phone on Sunday, however a Kremlin made some main points about the conversation, apart from the fact that Putin congratulated the Belarusian leader on his 66th birthday.
Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania after the election due to considerations about her safety, disgustedly appreciated her birthday.
“I want you to triumph over your fears, look the fact in the eye, pay attention to other people’s voices and leave,” he told The Associated Press by phone from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
Lukashenko has consistently blamed Western countries for encouraging protests and says NATO is repositioning forces on Belarus’s western border to interfere with unrest, a claim the alliance strongly denies.
On Sunday, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence said it was conducting army training in the Grodno region, near the borders of Poland and Lithuania, simulating a defense opposed to an invasion.
On Saturday, Belarus seriously suppressed foreign media covering the protests, expelling at least four Russian hounds, adding two from the Associated Press. .
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Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story.