The 65-year-old leader appears to be suffering from a strategy to counter the protests. He continually blamed Western interference, claimed the protests were supported through the United States, and accused NATO of increasing troop concentrations in Poland and Lithuania on the western border of Belarus, which the alliance denied. He also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a position to offer security assistance to his government to quell protests if requested.
Lukashenko constantly cracked down on the opposition for his tenure and weariness with his extremist regime. Dismay over the country’s deteriorating economy and Lukashenko’s arrogant rejection of the coronavirus pandemic also appear to have galvanized opponents.
Belarus has changed. Lukashenko managed to unify everyone, from the intelligentsia to the intelligentsia, in the call for change, ”said protester Slava Chirkov, who attended Sunday’s rally with his wife and son.
They held a sign “Lukashenko, his milk went wrong,” referring to Lukashenko’s ancient paintings as director of a Soviet-era collective farm.
An equally gigantic crowd attended a rally a week ago and the rallies have taken up position since the vote. Many of the country’s major factories have been hit by protest movements through staff who have grown weary of government policies. These movements don’t just threaten existing ones. economy that suffers, but it also shows that opposition to Lukashenko extends beyond informed white-collar circles and into his classic blue-collar base.
“Are you going to paint for a dictator? Strike, that’s our answer,” Sergei Dilevsky, head of the strike committee at Minsk Tractor Works, one of Belarus’s largest trading companies, told protesters at Sunday’s demonstration.
Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania the day after the election, while other imaginable hopefuls fled the country even before the election.
An Opposition Coordination Council established last week to design a force transition strategy, however, the Belarusian government has introduced a criminal investigation into its formation.