More than 100,000 people gathered in central Minsk for a demonstration against Lukashenko World

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The authorities called on the participants of the event to break up and warned against the use of force by numerous police and military units. In the end, however, everything happened in peace. Protests also took place in Brest, Grodno, Vitebsk and other Belarusian cities.

The crowd with white-red flags, which became the colors of the protest, filled Minsk’s Independence Square and adjacent streets and chanted slogans such as “Leave!”, “Freedom!” AFP agency. According to him, Lukashenko, who has ruled for 26 years, has never encountered such numerous and persistent resistance.

More than 250K already at the Independence square in Minsk! It’s more than in 1990 when people protested for Independence.

Belarus will be free. pic.twitter.com/cUKTIKuKqo

– Franc Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 23, 2020

“Belarus has changed. Lukashenko was able to unite everyone, from workers to intelligence, “one of the demonstrators told the AP. The DPA wrote about “the unprecedented cohesion of citizens of all classes in the country, controlled in the Soviet style even thirty years after the fall of communism.” According to her, the protests in Minsk are neither anti-Russian nor pro-European. “Are you going to work for a dictator? The strike is our answer, “he said at a demonstration by the leader of the strike committee at the Minsk tractor factory.

During the hundreds of thousands of demonstrations, footage appeared on the Internet, depicting 65-year-old Lukashenko in a bulletproof vest and a gun in his hand. The Tut.by server noted that Lukashenko’s Kalashnikov was missing a stack.

Lukashenka went outside the cordon of the Palace of Independence and told his people:
– Thank you, you are handsome! We will deal with them.
– We are with you to the end!https://t.co/GQlWMyN0HZ pic.twitter.com/sGBiyA5WOP

– Novaya Gazeta (@novaya_gazeta) August 23, 2020

Lukashenko warned on Saturday during a visit to a military unit in the West Belarusian city of Grodno against a revolution that he said was trying to unleash a foreign country in the country. According to the agencies, he announced that he would instruct the Minister of Defense to take the “toughest measures” to protect the integrity of the state. He also ordered the striking factories to close from Monday.

The North Atlantic Alliance has denied that its troops have gathered on the Polish and Lithuanian borders with Belarus, as Lukashenko has argued in Grodno, which is close to the borders with Poland and Lithuania.

The accusation was also denied by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauséda, who, together with his predecessor Dalia Grybauskaité and tens of thousands of other Lithuanians, joined the human chain, stretching from Vilnius to the border with Belarus. The event in support of Belarus’ call for democracy took place on the anniversary of the human chain in the Baltics in 1989, when hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians expressed a desire for independence. According to the Russian BBC, about 400 people came to Riga in support of the Belarusians, including Latvian President Egils Levits. Similar events took place in other cities around the world, in Prague a symbolic human chain was created on Sunday evening on Charles Bridge by about two hundred people.

#Belarus |The crowds near Planeta Hotel in #Minsk. More people keep coming pic.twitter.com/AsBzPnR16k

– Balki Begumhan Bayhan (@bbbayh) August 23, 2020

Protests in Belarus erupted after the August 9 presidential election, which Lukashenko said for the sixth time, with more than 80 percent of the vote, while opposition candidate Svyatlan Tsichanouska won 10 percent. Many Belarusians consider this result to be falsified. The opposition, like the European Union, does not recognize the election result. The protests, which were not suppressed by brutal police crackdown in the first days after the election, continued on Sunday on the fifteenth day.

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