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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / What’s Happening In Belarus?

What’s Happening In Belarus?

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A very good question. I’ve been thinking about writing a post for a while, but there is a long backstory and what is happening now is not at all clear.

Belarus just had a contested election. Alexander Lukashenka, who has been president since the breakup of the Soviet Union and an official before that, was seriously challenged by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Lukashenka claimed victory with 80% of the vote. Unofficial polls suggest it may have been the other way around. I’ll let Olya Oliker explain. This is the best short explanation I’ve seen.

Large demonstrations have been going on across the country since the weekend. Some of the police response has been horrendously brutal. Several people have died.

But there is also some friendly police response, with police simply walking away.

Some photos and videos:

Vladimir Putin is being cautious. He must be extremely alarmed at the prospect of losing his man in Belarus, but on the other hand, Lukashenka has defied Putin on a number of things, including refusing to allow Russian airbases in Belarus.

It’s not at all clear how this will turn out.

Update: More from Shaun Walker in The Guardian.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    MattF

    Belarus was ground zero in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. My first thought is always that the inhabitants are living in a graveyard. Maybe that’s changing, but I’m reluctant to bet on that.

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    How far is Lukashenka willing to go to stay in power? And how many people in the police and the military are willing to follow him down that road? I know that if he decides to keep power by too much blood it will impact him both internally and externally. But it’s looking like the people of Belarus might just be done with him. It’s not going to be an easy sort of battle.

  4. 4.

    burnspbesq

    Hard to imagine, but Lukashenko’s response to the pandemic was even worse than Trump’s. Now more than ever, he needs to go—but it needs to be triggered internally, by the military and security forces hanging him out to dry and ensuring a fair vote count.

    Full marks to Lithuania for giving Tikhanovskaya a place to bolt to. She would almost certainly have suffered a fatal “accident” if she had stayed.

  5. 5.

    CaseyL

    @MattF: I don’t think it’s possible to massacre so many people without the citizenry being aware and complicit.  People turning against, and turning in, their neighbors, friends, colleagues.

    Are those people haunted by their choices?

    Do they keep silent, so that later generations can’t be sure what happened?

    How long does the stain of the crime persist, and how does it affect a national culture?

    “Graveyard” is a very apt description.

  6. 6.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I have a ton of stuff coming across my Twitter timeline. So far today, there seems to be less brutality than earlier. And what I post here will probably lean toward the more optimistic – I just can’t bear to read the stuff about the beatings.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    Alexander Lukashenka, who has been president since the breakup of the Soviet Union and an official before that, was seriously challenged by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

    She is a brave woman. I understand that her husband was an activist who had been running for president, but that he had been harrassed and arrested and disqualified as a candidate.

    What a mess. Democracy is under attack all around the world.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    @Cheryl Rofer: Okay so I don’t know if Jared Leto is just jumping on the bandwagon or if he has a connection to Belarus but he posted a Belarusian flag today.

  9. 9.

    Mary G

    I’ve seen some horrifying injuries on protesters and film of police stopping cars at random and just whaling on the occupants in the past few days, plus they shut down the internet for a day. Thanks for providing at least some explanation. I don’t know why our media has just been ignoring this.

  10. 10.

    Mag

    If Trump manages to steal the election, which is looking more and more like a possibility with DeJoy’s sabotage of the USPS, then what is happening in Belarus is a preview of America on November 4.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    Выпускники возвращают грамоты и награды школам, которые участвовали в фальсификации результатов выборов pic.twitter.com/n8aj6gqKRO— Чай з варэннем (@belteanews) August 14, 2020

    Google translate: graduates return certificates and awards to schools that participated in falsifying election results

  13. 13.

    gratuitous

    I remember when the Berlin Wall was breached. Days of demonstrations at the Wall slowly gave way to tentative hammer blows on the Wall. When the anticipated lethal response from the East German side didn’t happen, demonstrators got bolder and more aggressive. The government troops in Belarus may be reaching the limit of their capacity for beating and shooting their neighbors.

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    Thanks for this post, Cheryl. I’ve been trying to keep up, but it’s a very fluid situation, and with Internet access being shut off periodically, there are periods where almost nothing is getting out. I’ve been getting info more from Kyiv – one of my son’s Kyiv-based buddies was in Minsk over last weekend and ended up being detained by OMON, just got released yesterday, so I’m waiting for a longer report. Plus I’m pretty sure my son interviewed with Oliker for a position with her org in Kyiv, but he’s temporarily back on US soil.

  15. 15.

    C Stars

    @Mag: I’ve been thinking that as well. If Trump manages to throw the results into chaos and there are mass demonstrations, at that point the DHS goons who got sent into Portland etc. will have to decide where their loyalties lie.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Mag: People in Belarus ask that you not do that. What is happening in Belarus is not an echo or a portend of anything, it is simply what is happening in Belarus in August of 2020. They have their own dynamics, don’t try to fit it into some other narrative.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    YouTube with English subtitles of very passionate war veteran who says he was a colonel in the GRU supporting the protesters and asking army to defy orders

  18. 18.

    Cheryl Rofer

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The US, U.K. and Canada should join with Magnitsky sanctions against the same individuals as soon as possible.

    Probably January 2021 for the U.S.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    @Mike in NC:

    I’m guessing Trump cannot pronounce his name, learned of his existence within the last week, and has declared him “My kind of guy.”

    Guess #2: Trump has spent more than a little time trying to learn where a new hotel might go in there.

  23. 23.

    germy

    I'm police officer and I was wearing this uniform with pride and honor… Now I'm mom on maternity leave. Today I wear this uniform for the last time, I want to take it off because I'm ashamed to see police fighting same people to who they gave oath.. pic.twitter.com/s2BgRpXttn

    — Belarus in action (@positivehater1) August 14, 2020

  24. 24.

    The Moar You Know

    The Tikhanovskaya “not a hostage” video told me all I need to know about just how “legitimate” that election was. Those poor people.

  25. 25.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Trenin is a Russian expert with the Carnegie Endowment. He usually takes the Russian side of things. At some point, Putin is going to have to decide whether and how to intervene. It would not be surprising if he and Lukashenka have been talking. But things will come to the point of killing a lot of people or Lukashenka’s leaving.

  26. 26.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Cheryl Rofer: Before the election, Adam asked me what I thought, and I said I thought Lukashenka had enough control to hold on. I’d love to be wrong, but I’m not there yet – although the situation on the ground is changing.

  27. 27.

    TomatoQueen

    OT and OT: maybe some happy news from WaPo and the National Zoo: Mei Xiang, at 22, showing obvious pregnancy signs. Attempt at inserting a link to the story an ugly failure. If I remember correctly, links to the panda cams are on si.edu, and they will be up and running this weekend, as she might give birth.

    _

  28. 28.

    JPL

    If Putin encourages him to step down, I imagine he will.   That is his main support.   I have no specific knowledge, but just different articles that I read.

    Amazing to hear him ask people to stay in because people are coming from the Netherlands.   hmmm

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    A Russian you tuber I subscribe to say  the Russians view Lukashenka as like some barking mad uncle and Lukashenka has a bit of following there who find Lukashenka speeches hilarious for their nonsense.  I could belive the Russian government considers Lukashenka a lost cause.

  30. 30.

    gene108

    @Mary G: 

    They can’t get in the country? Saw a couple of BBC reporters uploading a video of protests. They said something about foreign journalists getting kicked out or not let in.

  31. 31.

    artem1s

    Does anyone know if there are ethnicity issues that are likely to erupt once there is a power vacuum. I’m thinking back on the break up of Yugoslavia. Also, the recent return to hyper-nationalism and anti-semitism by Polish leaders of Solidarity. Are we looking at a break up of another Soviet forced marriage along ethic lines at some point? The Czech Republic and Slovakia managed to do it without too much violence – Bosnia and Kosovo not so much. What I remember from WWII history is that there were factions in Belarus that welcomed the Nazi invasion/Anschluss and participated in the holocaust and final solution eradication. It’s hard to believe that factions present in so many of the old Soviet block breakups aren’t active and participating on one or both sides of this power struggle.

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    @gene108: They were not letting in foreigners with journalist visas or entry permits. I know some who went in as visitors or tourists.

  34. 34.

    Redshift

    We have an honorary “daughter” in Belarus, so I’m trying to learn all I can and hoping for the best. It’s difficult to keep in contact with her at the best of times.

  35. 35.

    Gin & Tonic

    @artem1s: Short answer: no. Slight longer answer: read Snyder’s Bloodlands. A little longer answer: in that part of the world at that time, you got to choose between being killed or conquered and enslaved by the USSR or by Nazi Germany. Hard choices make for bad decisions.

  36. 36.

    Matt McIrvin

    the people of Belarus knowingly traded electoral choices and freedom of speech for political and economic stability.

    So, a lot like America, where we knowingly traded electoral choices, freedom of speech, AND political and economic stability for owning of the libs.

  37. 37.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Gin & Tonic: That’s what I thought early in the week. Now I’m not so sure that Lukashenka can hang on. The longer the protests go, the worse for him.

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I could belive the Russian government considers Lukashenka a lost cause.

    But he’s their lost cause. And they have no way, short of invading, to insert their successor.

    What probably bothers Putin most of all is the similarity of what is happening here to the demonstrations that took down the Soviet Union and the Maidan demonstrations in Ukraine. Those memories both anger him and make him afraid it could spread to Russia. In my reading, I see that some are asking what the demonstrators in Khabarovsk are taking from these demonstrations.

  38. 38.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Gin & Tonic:

     People in Belarus ask that you not do that. What is happening in Belarus is not an echo or a portend of anything, it is simply what is happening in Belarus in August of 2020. They have their own dynamics, don’t try to fit it into some other narrative.

    How do you know that? Serious question. Not so much what the people of Belarus want or do not want, but that it is not an “echo or portend” of what is to come?

  39. 39.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    1. No leader is indispensable and utterly necessary to keep in power for 25-30 years.

    2. The dictator needs to deliver peace and plenty to enough people for long enough to legitimize his rule and create a willing gaggle of sycophantic mouthpieces to excuse inevitable fuckups.

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s the colonialist mindset at work. People in formerly colonized or captured nation-states have their own agency, their own political and economic factors driving their actions. Looking at elements which *you* think are similar to yours and extrapolating to your own conditions is cultural chauvinism. Americans do that all the fucking time.

  43. 43.

    J R in WV

    What’s happening in Belarus? Exactly what is happening in the USA right now, so far as the intentions of our “president” Trump.

    Lie, cheat, steal, falsify records of deaths and illness, destroy one of our oldest governmental institutions, The US Post Office, founded at least in part by Benjamin Franklin, do anything that might help “president” Trump “win” a second term, so he can avoid prosecutions for his crimes.

    Belarus is just 3 months ahead of our election cycle.

    Also, did any of you see Trump’s inability to even process the Question posed by the Huff Post reporter yesterday: “Do you regret all the lies you have told since beginning to run for president?” and Trump says “WHAT?” like he didn’t hear the question. More like his brain couldn’t process the question.

    What a piece of shoddy work that person is!

  45. 45.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Americans do that all the fucking time.

    I’m sure people in other countries do it all the time too

    People in formerly colonized or captured nation-states have their own agency, their own political and economic factors driving their actions.

    I don’t think I said otherwise

  46. 46.

    J R in WV

    @Mary G:

    I’ve seen some horrifying injuries on protesters and film of police stopping cars at random and just whaling on the occupants in the past few days, plus they shut down the internet for a day. Thanks for providing at least some explanation. I don’t know why our media has just been ignoring this.

    Our media is ignoring it because they’re afraid they too will be rounded up by “president” Trump’s anonymous storm troopers and beaten nearly to death, if they oppose his too strongly.

    Some may not be so afraid, but are being held back by management back at HQ, like CBS, who loves the clicks and ratings, but doesn’t want to really report accurately on the current administration, which is criminal from top to bottom.

    Who would have imagined that democracy in America can potentially be destroyed by the new Postmaster?!?!!

  47. 47.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I’m sure people in other countries do it all the time too

    In Ukraine, all news and commentary about the situation in Belarus is about the situation in Belarus, not about any parallels to Ukraine in 2014. That’s the difference between a colonized country and a colonizing country.

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Belarus is an entirely different country with a different history from the US.  Facile historical parallels do no favors to people trying to understand what is happening there or here.

  55. 55.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Interesting expression of solidarity from Latvia and Lithuania. There have been shorter chain demonstrations within Belarus.

  57. 57.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @C Stars:

     

    If Trump manages to throw the results into chaos and there are mass demonstrations, at that point the DHS goons who got sent into Portland etc. will have to decide where their loyalties lie.

    They’ve already picked their side.

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