It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Belarus First Telegram Revolution and NEXTA is Its Voice, Yuryeva Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, September 7 – The protests in Belarus have already been christened the first Telegram Revolution, and NEXTA – which should be read as “nekhta” and which means “someone” in Belarusian – has emerged out of the mass of these channels as “the face of that rising, according to Darya Yuryeva, a journalist for Polish Radio.
The founder and moving spirit of the channel is Stepan Putilo, a 22-year-old Belarusian who was forced to flee to Poland – his family has since followed – when the Lukashenka regime wanted to bring charges against him for a YouTube post “insulting” the Belarusian leader (svoboda.org/a/30822836.html).
NEXYA was initially a YouTube channel, but after Minsk tried to block it, Putilo shifted its operation to the telegram network which he says he first viewed simply as an insurance policy against regime efforts to close his news and information service. Moscow then tried to block that too but failed.
There have been threats and even attacks against the channel in Poland, but Polish police have protected the station and Putilo and his family.
As a result, the telegram channel has grown exponentially. Initially, it had only 30,000 to 40,000 subscribers but now has “more than two million” an enormous number given that there are only 9.4 million people in Belarus, although he concedes 30 percent of the subscribers live outside that country.
One of the reasons for its growth is NEXTA’s willingness to publish secret information; another is the regime’s closure of other channels like Tut.by, Onliner.by and so on. “We have remained accessible,” and our audience continues to expand from its youth base to the population as a whole, Putilo says.
Now, given that the protests against Lukashenka have no leaders who are both free and in Belarus, people have begun to ask NEXTA to provide direction. But that is not its task. It is a media project and is interested in spreading information. If they use it as a coordination resource, that is their choice, not NEXTA’s.
“We do say to people that they can go out and defend their rights,” Putilo continues, but we don’t force them to. The regime is pushing them into the streets. It is recognized as illegitimate by the entire world, and “the main enemy of the Belarusian people must sit on the bench of the accused in the Hague.”
The Polish-Based Blogger Who's Become A Driving Force In The Belarusian Protests
Part news outlet, part activist blog, the Telegram channel Nexta is run by
Stsyapan Putsila, a 22-year-old former film student working out of an office
building in Warsaw.
WARSAW -- Five years ago, a Belarusian teenager studying film in Poland set up a YouTube channel to show videos that he made and poke fun at his country's longtime leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
After tangling with YouTube copyright laws, the student, Stsyapan Putsila, shifted his Nexta channel and his tactics in 2018 to Telegram, the messaging app whose encryption technologies have made it wildly popular in Russia, Iran, and other countries whose governments have suppressed independent media and communications.
Fast forward two years, and Putsila's Nexta – taken from the Belarusian word for "someone" and pronounced "nekhta" -- has surged in popularity, first and foremost among Belarusians seeking uncensored information in a country whose state-run media usually serve only as a mouthpiece for the government.
A mix of user-submitted photos and videos, forwarded news items, biting opinion, and instructions for street protesters, the channel's Telegram subscribers now total more than 2 million -- making it one of the biggest information sources for Belarusians.
And with protests against Lukashenka showing no sign of relenting a month after a deeply disputed election in which he claimed to have won a sixth term, Nexta is at the vanguard – both in documenting the demonstrations and in encouraging them.
'A Bit Like Revolutionaries'
"Even before the start of the Belarusian revolution, we were a nontraditional media [outlet]," Putsila, 22, said in a telephone interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service on September 3. "We did not have a centralized website on the Internet -- we are a modern information channel, mainly for young people."
Since the protests began, "we have changed a little and become a bit like revolutionaries, because people want that from us," he said.
"We are asked to publish plans describing what to do, because there are simply no clear leaders in Belarus, especially ones with such an audience," Putsila said. "If there had been, it is clear that they would have been immediately detained. Now we not only inform, but to some extent also coordinate people."
With a team of six working out of a community center Warsaw, Putsila, who also uses the pseudonym Stepan Svetlov, pushes out dozens of items on the Telegram channel.
On September 7, one day after tens of thousands of Belarusians surged into Minsk's streets for the 29th day of protests, Nexta published -- in Russian, which is spoken by nearly everybody in Belarus -- a statement of support from European Union leaders and news items about the disappearance of one of the country's leading opposition figures.
Mixed in were videos of the September 6 protest in Minsk, whose numbers Belarusian authorities said totaled just 30,000 -- an estimate that Nexta and Belarusian opposition groups said was laughably low -- as well as an aerial photo with a diagram of which streets protesters could use to get around riot police blocking a key boulevard.
"We do not force anyone to protest," Putsila said. "We tell people that they can go out, defend their rights. Belarusians come out on their own."
A native of Minsk, Putsila went to the Polish city of Katowice to study film, and then moved to the Polish capital after graduating.
He has not been in his homeland since 2018, when Belarusian authorities opened a criminal investigation accusing him of "insulting the president" on YouTube. YouTube eventually pulled down Putsila's channel after Belarusian authorities complained of copyright violations, prompting the move to Telegram.
"We've received dozens of threats against us; we've even received threats that our office would be blown up," he said. His parents and his younger brother have fled to Poland, fearing for their safety.
News reports say Polish police now guard the building where he has his offices; Putsila would not comment.
In 2019, Nexta began publishing classified and confidential documents that purported to come from within Belarus; the channel gained new popularity after revealing that a traffic police officer whom authorities said had committed suicide was in fact the victim of a killing.
"People have always been unhappy, especially in recent years, when they really became tired of him," Putsila said of Lukashenka, who came to power in 1994 and has extended his rule though elections and other votes that international observers have called undemocratic.
'A Great Example For The Rest Of The World'
After the August 9 election, which opponents say was falsified to give Lukashenka more than 80 percent of the vote, "people managed to unite, and now they feel they are the masters of their own land," Putsila said.
"Nevertheless, there are also the 'enforcers' -- this is how we call police and security officials, who are the foundation of Lukashenka's regime. However, he no longer has support among many officials; they don't support him, but only themselves," he said.
Putsila said that Belarusians had genuine hopes in Lukashenka, but that his actions over 26 years in office have worn on them. And that the official election result and the harsh police crackdown -- the violent arrest of hundreds of people and evidence that some have been tortured -- was the last straw.
"Belarusians have set a great example for the rest of the world. During the protests, people even were taking off their shoes when they climbed onto benches, they brought each other water, food, flowers. This shows a high level of self-organization," he said.
"Lukashenka tells Belarusians that the state has raised them and made people out of them, and they are ungrateful," he said. "However, it is the people themselves who are teaching children in schools, who are creating jobs, and the state, as represented by Lukashenka, does not respect these people."
Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Mike Eckel based on reporting by Daria Yurieva, a contributor to RFE/RL's Russian Service.
Lukashenka Says He 'Maybe Overstayed A Bit' Amid Outrage Over Missing Foe's 'Detention' At Border
Coordination Council presidium member Maryya Kalesnikava (file photo)
MINSK -- Embattled Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenko has reportedly acknowledged on Russian television that he "maybe overstayed a bit" as anger mounts over the disappearance and subsequent detention of a leading opposition organizer on September 8.
Belarusian border officials said they detained Maryya Kalesnikava at the border with Ukraine after a full day of Belarusian and international calls mount for answers from Minsk on her suspected abduction and other disappearances of influential Lukashenka critics.
The deputy interior minister of neighboring Ukraine called the circumstances of Maryya Kalesnikava's detention an attempt at a "forcible expulsion" with the aim of "compromising the Belarusian opposition," after weeks of massive anti-government demonstrations.
In the evening of September 8, dozens of people were detained by security forces during a spontaneous march in Minsk.
Several hundred people gathered in the city center in the early evening in a "march to support the repressed." RFE/RL's Belarus Service reported that police were detaining both male and female marchers, sometimes violently.
Marchers carried banners supporting Kalesnikava, calling her "our hero."
Kalesnikava reportedly arrived at the Alyaksandrauka border checkpoint at around 5 a.m. on September 8 in a car with two other opposition organizers who went missing the previous day, council press secretary Anton Randyonkau and executive secretary Ivan Krautsou.
Speaking to journalists in Kyiv, Randyonkau said Kalesnikava tore up her passport and escaped from the car in which the three were being expelled. She returned to the Belarusian side of the border on foot and was taken into custody, he said.
All three are key figures on the Coordination Council that has pressed for a peaceful transition of power since election officials declared Lukashenka the runaway winner of an August 9 vote they say was fraudulent, and colleagues raised alarm bells when they went missing on September 7.
Meanwhile, the embattled Lukashenka -- who has led the country for 26 years -- was quoted by Russian media as vowing once again that he won't step down.
But he appeared to acknowledge that he might have been in power too long. "Yes, maybe I overstayed a bit," Lukashenka was quoted as saying.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka speaks to Russian journalists in Minsk, on September 8.
He reportedly repeated his suggestion that a new election might be held after constitutional reforms are effected -- an offer that opposition leaders suggest is a delaying tactic to quell the mass demonstrations.
Lukashenka also said during the interview that he and "the Russian establishment" had concluded that "if Belarus collapses today, Russia will be next." He said he calls Russian President Vladimir Putin his "older brother" and blamed the United States and the Telegram messaging service for Belarus's unrest.
"How are you [Russians] going to counteract the Telegram channels?" he said. "Do you have the capability of blocking these Telegram channels? No one does, even those who came up with this whole spider web -- the Americans. You see what is happening there. And Telegram channels are playing the leading role there."
Belarusian State Border Committee representative Anton Bychkouski initially said that Kalesnikava, Randyonkau, and Krautsou had all left the country early on September 8.
Contact Lost
But Belarusian state television later quoted Bychkouski as saying that Kalesnikava, a Coordination Council presidium member, was detained trying to cross the border while the other two had entered Ukraine.
Ukraine's State Border Service later confirmed that Kalesnikava did not enter the country but that Randyonkau and Krautsou had arrived and were being processed.
Ukrainian Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko appeared to confirm that version of events in a Facebook post describing the Belarusians' arrival at the checkpoint as "a forcible expulsion from a native country with the aim of compromising the Belarusian opposition."
Herashchenko said Kalesnikava "was unable to be removed from Belarus because this brave woman took action to prevent her movement across the border."
He accused Lukashenka's regime of trying "to present everything as if opposition leaders [were] throwing hundreds of thousands of protesters against Lukashenka's regime and fleeing to cozy Ukraine."
He added of the Belarusian oppositionists' appearance at the border: "It wasn't a voluntary trip!"
Lukashenka's exiled opposition challenger in last month's election, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, issued a call for Kalesnikava's immediate release.
"Maryya Kalesnikava must be released immediately, as well as all previously apprehended members of the Coordination Council and political prisoners. The Coordination Council's goal is to be a negotiating platform," Tsikhanouskaya said, according to her press service.
A member of the council's leadership, Paval Latushka, said that "the government didn't achieve its goal."
"The Coordination Council has not lost its morale, it continues to work," he added.
An eyewitness reported seeing Kalesnikava swept up by unidentified men from the street and into a minivan in downtown Minsk on September 7. Acquaintances said contact was lost soon afterward with Randyonkau and Krautsou.
Their disappearances elicited accusations by the European Union that the embattled Belarusian regime was using kidnapping and intimidation to quash more than four weeks of unprecedented protests.
Thousands of people have been arrested, journalists have been harassed and expelled, and clips have emerged of Lukashenka's security services brutally abusing detainees.
An unnamed senior official in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States was "extremely concerned by continued human rights violations" in Belarus. The official said the forced expulsion of opposition figures is one of the methods Minsk "is using in its attempts to deny freedom of speech."
Germany, which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency, has demanded information on those who went missing and the release of political prisoners.
"We demand clarity on the whereabouts and the release of all political prisoners in Belarus," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild daily in statements published on September 8.
"The continued arrests and repression, including and in particular against members of the Coordination Council, are unacceptable," Maas added.
The French Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying "France strongly condemns the arbitrary arrests and practice of forcing into exile several members of the Coordination Council, as well as numerous demonstrators in recent days."
Members of the Coordination Council and its decision-making presidium have been summoned by police and in some cases sentenced to jail.
An eyewitness reported seeing Kalesnikava swept up by unidentified men from the street and into a minivan in downtown Minsk on September 7.
Acquaintances said contact was lost soon afterward with Randyonkau and Krautsou.
Tsikhanouskaya Abroad
The opposition's leading hope in last month's election was political novice Tsikhanouskaya, who fled into exile in Lithuania days after the vote.
Tsikhanouskaya appeared before a virtual meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)'s Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy on September 8 during an exchange of views on the situation in Belarus.
She is also scheduled to visit Warsaw this week to hold meetings with top Polish officials.
The chairman of the Belarusian parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Andrey Savinykh, suggested to the same PACE meeting that Poland was behind the anti-Lukashanka protests.
"Belarusian authorities have information showing that the protests had been meticulously planned and were coordinated -- among other means -- through social networks from abroad, specifically via the Nexta Telegram channel, whose activities, according to the information provided by a number of media outlets, are run by the central group of psychological warfare of the Polish armed forces," Savinykh said.
Lukashenka, who has served five terms already, has refused to hold talks with his opponents and dismissed calls to hold a new election.
The EU "expects the Belarusian authorities to ensure the immediate release of all detained on political grounds before and after the falsified August 9 presidential election," the bloc's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on September 7.
Belarusian authorities have acknowledged detaining some 633 protesters as tens of thousands marched in the capital and other cities on September 6 to pressure Lukashenka to leave. With reporting by Current Time, AFP, TASS, AP, and Reuters RFE/RL's Belarus Service
RFE/RL's Belarus Service is one of the leading providers of news and analysis to Belarusian audiences in their own language. It is a bulwark against pervasive Russian propaganda and defies the government’s virtual monopoly on domestic broadcast media.
'Snowball effect' in Belarus unstoppable - Solidarity leader
NEWS & POLITICS (PAP) MB/JCH SEPTEMBER 08, 2020
Duda said that Poland was striving to help Belarus, but had to move within diplomatic boundaries to avoid accusations of meddling in the internal affairs of the country.Radek Pietruszka/PAP
The process that is underway in Belarus is unstoppable, Solidarity Union leader Piotr Duda said on Tuesday after returning from the Belarusian capital city Minsk.
Recounting his talks in Minsk, Duda cited Alexander Jaroshuk, head of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, who described the developments in Belarus as "snowballing," and unstoppable. Duda added that Solidarity intended to support Belarus's free trade union and to aid the families of unionists.
Duda also noted the need for measures to ensure that funds channelled to the Belarusian opposition from Solidarity's "Solidarity With Belarus" fund were really reaching those for whom they were intended and not taken over by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
He also announced plans to establish scholarships for Belarusian students in Poland and to organise holidays for Belarusian children.
Duda also said that Poland was striving to help Belarus, but had to move within diplomatic boundaries to avoid accusations of meddling in the internal affairs of the country.
On Wednesday Duda is scheduled to meet Svyatlana Tschikhanouska, Lukashenko's main opponent in the rigged August 9 presidential elections which sparked the mass protests that are underway in the country.
Asked what he planned to discuss with Tschikhanouska, Duda said he planned to "listen more, rather than to speak."
"The situation is very difficult. This is why we agreed after the talks that I will meet in Warsaw with PM Mateusz Morawiecki to inform him about the current situation in Belarus, which I am familiar with thanks to reports from my friends, (the Belarusian - PAP) trade unionists," the Solidarity head said.
Tuesday marks the 31st day of mass protests in Belarus after a rigged August presidential election gave a landslide victory to the country's to-date strongman Alexander Lukashenko, leaving the strongly supported Tschikhanouska with a mere 10 percent of the vote.
Solidarity head leaves for Belarus on Monday
(PAP) AT/EJ SEPTEMBER 07, 2020
Solidarity head leaves for Belarus on MondayAdam Warżawa/PAP
Solidarity trade union head Piotr Duda is leaving for Belarus on Monday to meet with leader of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions Alexander Yaroshuk, Duda's spokesman Marek Lewandowski announced.
Lewandowski wrote in a press release that Piotr Duda is going to Minsk at the invitation of the congress. He is planned to meet Yaroshuk to talk about the current situation in Belarus. "Of course, if he is allowed to enter," Lewandowski said.
"We will exchange views about the current challenges in Europe as well as the ones facing the Belarusian national trade union movement," the spokesman wrote, adding that the talk will also be focused on democracy, attacks against the freedom of associations as well as international mechanisms and tools designed to solve such problems, the strengthening of Belarusian trade unions, the development of trade union education and challenges facing Belarusian workers.
Duda and Yaroshuk are also planned to speak about charity aid and support planned as part of the Polish trade union fund 'Solidarity with Belarus."
On August 9, Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected president of Belarus having allegedly acquired 80.1 percent of the vote in the national elections, while his main contender Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ostensibly garnered 10.1 percent. Belarusians, who believe that the election has been fixed, have been staging protests since election day.
Putin is using RT to double down in Belarus:
'If you arrest the right 500 people, the other 100,000 won't show up'
Mitch Prothero File photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi. Reuters
Russia's Putin sent staff from RT, the Russian-controlled TV channel, to state media stations in Belarus — a signal that he does not want protestors to push Belarus's Lukashenko out of power.
"Putin has decided to fully back Lukashenko to prevent him from falling to this popular uprising," a NATO military official told Insider.
"This is the first stage of propping up your dictator ally: Solidify control over state media. Then bolster intelligence gathering on who opposes you," the source said. Meanwhile, Lukashenko is continuing to arrest any opposition leaders who have not fled the country.
After weeks of speculation and ambiguity, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be trying to solidify the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a source tells Insider. The key signal? Putin sent Russian resources from RT to "solidify control over state media" in Belarus, a source told Insider.
Meanwhile, Lukashenko continues to arrest his opponents.
On September 7, Lukashenko detained the last major opposition candidate to his 26-year presidency, Maria Kolesnikova. She was one of three major opposition candidates to Lukashenko, and last to remain inside Belarus. The others have fled into exile.
The arrests came less than a month after an election widely seen as fraudulent. While the official result returned Lukashenko to power with a huge majority, no one believes the result is real. The public has been protesting on the streets of Minsk for weeks, prompting speculation that Lukashenko might be forced out of power by his own citizens.
After a wave of arrests of protesters and threats to activists, Kolesnikova was detained at the border between Belarus and Ukraine late Monday night. Two of her aides made it to Ukraine. But Kolesnikova's status is currently unknown. It is widely suspected she was arrested.
The disappearance of the last remaining opposition figure comes just two days after more than 100,000 people demonstrated peacefully against Lukashenko. 'Putin has decided to fully back Lukashenko to prevent him from falling to this popular uprising'
Now, European intelligence services say Lukashenko is clearly under Putin's protection. That's important because, for weeks, Putin seemed to be publicly ambivalent about the fate of his neighboring strongman.
"Putin has decided to fully back Lukashenko to prevent him from falling to this popular uprising," said a NATO military official from a Baltic country, who cannot be identified speaking to the media. "What his end goal with this is remains unclear. But for now we have seen the signs that he is pushing soft power support to Lukashenko. The question is, do we see a hard power effort or 'Little Green Men,' if the soft power fails." "Little Green Men" is military shorthand for the irregular, somewhat anonymous military operations conducted by unmarked Russian forces in 2014 in Crimea, and 2008 in Georgia.
He thanked Simonyan specifically for sending technicians and staff to help keep Belarus's national broadcasters on-air. There had been widespread resignations from Belarusian media staffers demanding the release of detained colleagues. 'We have also seen several planes closely associated with the FSB flying in people and equipment'
"We have also seen several planes closely associated with the FSB flying in people and equipment for intelligence and surveillance operations targeting the opposition leadership," said the Baltic official.
"This is the first stage of propping up your dictator ally: Solidify control over state media. Then bolster intelligence gathering on who opposes you. Putin knows you can't arrest 100,000 people for demonstrating but he's convinced if you arrest the right 500 people, the other 100,000 won't show up."
"No to Kremlin takeover of Belarus!" Belarusian protesters increasingly want the Kremlin to stay out of their affairs.
Belarusians have taken to the streets in the thousands every day since a disputed August 9 election, demanding authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka step down after a vote they contend was rigged to hand him a landslide win over an opposition candidate who drew unprecedented support before the balloting.
The protests have focused on domestic issues -- namely the future of Lukashenka, who has remained in power for 26 years by suppressing dissent, stifling the media, and staging a series of elections and other votes deemed undemocratic by opponents and international observers.
But on September 3 there was something new, according to observers: Amid the red-striped flags of the first independent Belarusian republic -- the main symbol of opposition to Lukashenka -- there were signs of anti-Kremlin sentiment and messages warning Moscow against meddling in the affairs of its much smaller western neighbor.
Demonstrators held up signs reading, "We're Belarusians, not a Russian region," and "Putin, who are you with?" according to the Telegram channel Nexta and the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank that is monitoring the events in Belarus.
Lukashenka, who accused the Kremlin shortly before the election of sending mercenaries to Belarus to sow unrest, has now turned to its traditional ally for support amid Western countries' condemnation of what many consider a rigged vote and the bloody crackdown on the persistent postelection protests.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long pushed a wavering Lukashenka to accept closer integration between the two countries, has recently voiced stronger support for the Belarusian leader -- exploiting, analysts say, Lukashenka’s weaker position.
The September 3 protest followed a meeting earlier that day in Minsk between Lukashenka and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who reported that progress was made toward deeper integration under the aegis of a Russia-Belarus "Union State" that was created in the 1990s but exists largely on paper.
Mishustin claimed they moved forward on formalizing the Union State's "Union Cabinet of Ministers" -- a government -- and other "economic measures." The Kremlin claimed Lukashenka said he would "finally dot the i's" on "very sensitive and painful" Union State agreements in an upcoming meeting with Putin in Moscow.
"No to Putin's nationalism in Belarus!" SVABODA IS THE UKRAINIANFASCIST MOVEMENT
Pressure To Integrate
In the past, Lukashenka has balked at measures such as creating a common currency, and the remarks raised alarm bells among opponents of closer integration.
Opposition leader Syatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who claims she won the August 9 election with 60 to 70 percent of the vote, denounced the meeting.
Tsikhanouskaya, now in Lithuania after arriving in the neighboring state shortly after the election under still-unclear circumstances, said that the sovereignty of Belarus cannot become a bargaining chip and that she doubted that "any decisions and agreements Lukashenka may sign will be recognized by the new government" -- meaning a post-Lukashenka government.
Like other opposition leaders, Tsikhanouskaya has cautioned outsiders against seeing the Belarusian unrest through the prism of a geopolitical showdown between Moscow and the West, and she previously told RFE/RL that the Belarusian opposition had no issues with Russia. But she has called on all countries to respect its sovereignty and will of the people.
Nexta, which has both documented and helped coordinate the protests, issued a post on September 3 reading "Let [Lukashenka's government] carry out as many negotiations with the Kremlin as they want, but only the people themselves will decide everything." The channel also reshared Tsikhanouskaya’s denunciation of Lukashenka's meeting with Mishustin.
Nexta "previously had not framed the Kremlin as being the Belarusian opposition’s adversary," the ISW's George Barros wrote.
Signs of anti-Moscow sentiment among the protesters were "[b]oth very significant and predictable (indeed, predicted)," said Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus and a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote on Twitter.
But they are not predominant. Hanna Baraban, a Belarusian journalist and analyst, said that "the main focus of the protesters remains on the numerous domestic political issues."
"Of course, some people are unhappy about the actions of Russia or the West, but these moods never take an actual place in the protesters' political agenda," Baraban told RFE/RL by e-mail.
'Lukashenka On A Short Leash'
Indications that Lukashenka may be bending over backwards to please the Kremlin, and increasingly taking rhetorical cues from the Russian government, could change that.
On September 3, Lukashenka accused Ukraine of supporting the demonstrations in Belarus, a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed without evidence that 200 Ukrainian neo-Nazis were operating in Belarus.
During his meeting with Mishustin, Lukashenka also gave backing to Kremlin claims that opposition leader Aleksei Navalny -- now being treated in Germany, where doctors detected he had been poisoned in Russia with Novichok, a toxin developed in the Soviet Union -- had not in fact been poisoned in Russia.
Ukrainian analyst Yevhen Mahda, executive director of the Kyiv-based Center for Social Relations, told RFE/RL's Belarus Service on September 5 that the Kremlin had "Lukashenka on a short leash...parroting the thoughts and words of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov."
Crisis In BelarusOt
According to Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security agencies and a senior associate fellow at the British-based Royal United Services Institute, Tertel has close ties to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) while Vakulchik "was a fierce guardian against Moscow penetration."
The reshuffle came amid reports that the FSB may be advising Lukashenka's government on ways to disperse the protests, as reported by Bloomberg, which noted a Russian plane belonging to the FSB was detected arriving in Minsk from Moscow on August 18.
George Kent, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees policy toward Belarus at the State Department, said on September 2 that the United States and its allies would have a tough response if Russia intervened in Belarus.
Putin has made remarks that seem intended as warnings to the Belarusian opposition and the West -- and reassurances to Lukashenka -- that such intervention could occur. On August 27, he said on state TV that he had formed a police reserve force that could be sent to Belarus if necessary, but that so far the situation had not reached that point.
With the Kremlin seemingly firmly in his corner, Lukashenka is taking harsher action on anti-government protesters, according to Alex Kokcharov, a London-based country risk analyst. "Lukashenka is clearly acting more boldly now, as he has the support of the Kremlin,” Kokcharov told RFE/RL.
Days after Lukashenka's meeting with Mishustin and the reshuffle at the KGB, Belarusian riot and regular police rounded up 600 people at the "March of Unity" demonstration in Minsk on September 6.
"These were the most massive and violent arrests in the country since the arrests during the first three days after the elections," Baraban said. One of Lukashenka's aims, she said, was to prove to the Kremlin that he is "fully supported by a massive security-forces apparatus that deserves Moscow's support as well."
"The second goal is to show the West that Belarusian authorities will play by their own rules, not caring about sanctions and other restrictive measures...imposed on them by the EU and United States," she added.
A day later, on September 7, unidentified men abducted opposition leader Maryya Kalesnikava and two of her staffers, Anton Randyonkau and Ivan Kratsou. Western calls for her release increased on September 8, after officials in Belarus and Ukraine said she had been detained after foiling an effort to force her out of Belarus by ripping up her passport at a border post.
According to Kokcharov, Russia's backing is emboldening Lukashenka while making enemies among average Belarusians -- many of whom will watch nervously when Putin and Lukashenka, who are expected to meet in Moscow in the coming days, hold what would be their first known in-person talks since the disputed election.
"Russia keeps doing it," Kokcharov said. "How to lose friends and alienate people."
Tony Wesolowsky is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
She Challenged Europe’s Last Dictator In Belarus And Was Forced Into Exile. She Says She’s The Country’s “Chosen President.”
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said in an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed News from exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, that she — not Alexander Lukashenko — is “the national, chosen president” of Belarus.
Posted on September 8, 2020 BuzzFeed News Svetlana Tikhanovskaya speaks to BuzzFeed News via Skype from Vilnius.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya does not like being called an opposition leader. First of all, she says, the movement she has inspired in Belarus is no longer the opposition: “we are the majority.” And secondly, she says, she was the winner of Belarus’s Aug. 9 presidential election.
“My role now can be described as national leader, I think. And, of course, as the national, chosen president,” Tikhanovskaya told BuzzFeed News in an exclusive interview Monday from Vilnius, Lithuania, where she has been living in exile for the last month. Shaking her head as she considered the events of the past several weeks, she added: “I never could have imagined that I would be in this place.”
In just three months, the 37-year-old mother of two has gone from being a self-described “housewife” with no political ambitions to becoming a hero of the protests shaking Belarus and dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year grip on power.
Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians inspired by her presidential campaign have protested in cities across Belarus — even in places Lukashenko considered his heartland — since an election that demonstrators believe was won by Tikhanovskaya. Her supporters said it was rigged in favor of the brutish and mustachioed incumbent Lukashenko, who claimed to have won an astounding 80% of all votes, versus 10% for Tikhanovskaya; the US and the EU said the election was neither free nor fair.
Lukashenko, a former Soviet-era collective farm manager known as “Europe’s last dictator,” has ruled Belarus with an iron first since 1994. All previous attempts by political opponents and protesters to oust him were crushed by his notorious riot police and KGB security services. In 2008, the US tightened sanctions against Belarus over worsening human rights abuses, and Lukashenko responded by expelling the US ambassador and 30 of 35 diplomats. (The two countries nominated new ambassadors earlier this year as relations warmed, but the confirmation of Washington’s new envoy is now uncertain.) The American democracy group Freedom House rated Belarus one of the least free nations in the world in its 2020 report.
But despite claiming a landslide victory, Lukashenko is on the ropes. Defying demands of the protesters and much of the international community, he has so far refused to leave office and dug in. Twice in the past two weeks, he has appeared increasingly desperate, donning riot gear and carrying an automatic assault rifle on the grounds of his presidential palace in Minsk, which he ordered to be surrounded with razor wire and guarded by the military and armored infantry fighting vehicles. His press service claimed it was all for self-defense when crowds of demonstrators marched on the palace.
But the crowds of more than 100,000 protesters — comprising students and teachers, tech entrepreneurs and state factory workers, pensioners and others — who have faced off with Lukashenko’s police and military forces have been largely peaceful.
“It’s hard to know what he’s doing,” Tikhanovskaya said about Lukashenko’s gun-toting antics. “We don’t understand if he wants to show us that he’s ready to kill his people or maybe he’s so afraid of his people that he has to have his gun.”
A former teacher and English translator, Tikhanovskaya said Lukashenko allowed her on the ballot because he didn’t think she had any chance of winning. The Soviet-esque strongman said during the campaign that a woman president “would collapse, poor thing.” He was more worried about Tikhanovskaya’s husband, popular blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was arrested while trying to register to be on the ballot and is currently languishing in a jail outside of the Belarusian capital, Minsk. He is able to communicate with his wife only through a lawyer twice a week, she said.
Tikhanovskaya said she stepped in to take his place “for love,” never thinking that she would find herself in the position she is in today. “He feels as good as a person in jail could feel,” she said of her husband. “He knows what’s going on in Belarus and he believes in the Belarusian people.”
Gone are the evenings at home when Tikhanovskaya said she would cook cutlets for her 10-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter and dream of where the family would take its once-a-year vacation on the Black Sea. Now she spends her days fighting for the future of her country, meeting with European heads of state and top US officials, and briefing the United Nations Security Council.
At the moment, she is doing it from exile. On Aug. 11, she was detained in Minsk, interrogated for hours by Lukashenko’s security services, and forced to film a video urging her supporters to stop protesting before being driven to the border and forced to leave Belarus under circumstances she still does not want to speak about in detail. She said the decision to flee was “one of the most difficult decisions of my life” and that “one day I will be able to tell the whole story.” Her children, whom she sent away to an EU country during her campaign after their school reported that state services were building a case against her to have them removed from her care, have since joined her.
Further underscoring the dangers facing opponents of Lukashenko, hours before she spoke with BuzzFeed News, Tikhanovskaya’s close ally and fellow political leader Maria Kolesnikova was kidnapped by masked men in central Minsk, along with two other members of a coordination council set up by Tikhanovskaya to negotiate an end to the crisis with Lukashenko’s regime. “The regime is engaged in terror, there is no other name for it,” she said. A witness told the independent news site Tut.by that they saw Kolesnikova being shoved into a minibus and driven away.
After almost 24 hours of silence, Lukashenko told a pool of top Russian state media figures in Minsk on Tuesday that Kolesnikova had been detained while being driven to the Ukrainian border. At a televised press conference in Kyiv, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, Kolesnikova’s associates who were with her at the time, told reporters that she had torn up her passport and thrown it out of the car to prevent Belarusian authorities from deporting her. Kravtsov said that Kolesnikova then “climbed out of the car and walked bravely to Belarusian territory.” A Belarusian state border guard official told the media that the political leader was pushed from a speeding car by her two associates in the area between crossing points to thwart her deportation. Ukrainian border guards confirmed in a statement that Kolesnikova never entered Ukrainian territory but said that her two colleagues had.
At the time of publishing, virtually all of Belarus’s protest leaders were serving jail sentences, sitting in detention, or else living in forced exile abroad.
But while Lukashenko has threatened and jailed many leaders of the protests, and used his security forces to brutalize and detain thousands of demonstrators — many of whom have recounted horrific stories of abuse and torture — he has thus far failed to stamp out the movement against him. Instead, with each crackdown attempt, the protests have swelled and the solidarity among demonstrators demanding his resignation has grown stronger.
Tikhanovskaya said the moment marks Belarusians’ “politically awakening.” Although she said it was less politics that have jolted her fellow citizens into action and more Lukashenko’s mismanagement of the country. Belarusians are angry at him for a stagnant economy that has made Belarus one of the poorest countries in Europe and more recently for his failure to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Lukashenko called COVID-19 a “psychosis” and claimed wrongly that simply drinking vodka, playing ice hockey, going to the sauna, and even riding tractors — something he called “tractor therapy” — would keep the virus at bay.
In the meantime, Belarusians suffered and died and hospitals were left without much-needed personal protective equipment. In the state’s absence, civil society stepped in, something that Tikhanovskaya said marked a turning point.
“When ordinary people started organizing and collecting money for our doctors,” she said, is when people began to realize that new leadership was needed and that Belarusians could self-organize. She noted one defining moment, when her husband, Tikhanovsky, published an interview with a doctor who was critical of authorities’ COVID-19 response. “People around the country started to collect money for him. And in just one day they collected for him his year’s salary,” she said. “People then understood that they can work together.”
Darius Mataitis / Reuters Svetlana Tikhanovskaya speaking at a press conference in Vilnius.
Speaking in slightly accented English, Tikhanovskaya said she never planned or expected to become a political figure. Born in Mikashevichi, a Belarusian town just 30 kilometers north of the border with Ukraine, Tikhanovskaya was one of many “Chernobyl children” whose health was affected by the radioactive fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Pripyat and whom Irish families welcomed into their homes for some rest and recuperation. She spent several summers as a child with a couple in the central Irish town of Roscrea.
At least part of her worldview was shaped by the time, she said.
“My visits in Ireland were my first visits abroad. It was really a shock to see what level of life people had,” Tikhanovskaya said, recalling shops filled with aisles of products. But one thing that left a lasting impact, she said, was the politeness of people, which gave her a sense of what was possible.
“You just go out and people are smiling at each other… In shops people always said hello and thank you,” she recalled. “And in our country it wasn’t always normal to say thank you. People were always thinking about money or having something to eat.”
She described herself as still being “the shy girl” of her youth and said she doesn’t want power; she hopes only to help the Belarus transition to new leadership.
“What has to happen is new, honest elections. It’s our number one goal,” she said. “And after this, building a new country. And all people have to participate in building this new country. We don’t want that one person to have all the power over people.” She sees Belarus’s new free-spoken and politically active generation as the antidote to Lukashenko’s Soviet-type system.
But Tikhanovskaya admitted that her movement might need some help. In video addresses last week, she asked the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and the UN Security Council for their support and to consider sanctions against officials responsible for rigging the presidential elections and committing what she said were “crimes against humanity” while dispersing protests.
She told BuzzFeed News that she had asked US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun earlier this month when they met in Vilnius to deliver the message to Washington that she would like the US to help mediate the crisis in Belarus. At the same time, however, she said she cautioned Biegun about the US becoming too deeply involved in it. “I asked Mr. Biegun not to interfere in our internal affairs,” Tikhanovskaya said. “What’s going on now is an internal affair, it’s our political crisis. I don’t think it would be OK if any country in the world would interfere in our internal affairs.
“We asked this of other countries,” she continued, referring to Russia. “But I underlined in that meeting [with Biegun] that maybe if we aren’t able to [influence change] ourselves, maybe we will need some kind of mediation. So we would be grateful to the US, Russia, and other countries if they would like to help us on this question and would act as mediators in this difficult situation.”
Belarus experts have criticized the US for a lack of support for the pro-democracy protests. “The EU is playing the lead role as far as the Western response. The US is nowhere,” Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who served as the British ambassador to Belarus from 2007 to 2009, told BuzzFeed News last month.
Tikhanovskaya said that she was not overly concerned by what some perceived as a poor US response but she hoped Americans would keep an eye on events in Belarus and support the pro-democracy movement.
“I know you have presidential debates soon,” she said. “So maybe if the Belarusian issue will be raised during these presidential debates we would be rather grateful for this.”
On Monday, Reuters quoted three unnamed EU diplomats as saying the bloc will impose economic sanctions on 31 senior Belarusian officials, including Interior Minister Yury Karayeu, who is seen as being responsible for the brutal police crackdown on protesters, by the middle of this month. Last week Reuters quoted an unnamed US diplomat as saying Washington could consider sanctions if Russia intervened to help Lukashenko.
The State Department did not respond to requests for comment. A senior US official told BuzzFeed News last month that career foreign service officers focused on Eastern Europe have been frustrated by what the official described as a lackluster response by the Trump administration. There are some indications that Russia already has intervened. Lukashenko has repeatedly portrayed the protests against him as a NATO plot to oust him and called for the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has enjoyed a difficult relationship over the years. The Kremlin’s response was tepid at first. But after Belarusian journalists walked out of state-run TV news offices in protest of Lukashenko’s heavy-handed tactics against protesters, Putin sent journalists from RT, formerly Russia Today, to keep pro-Lukashenko propaganda on the airwaves. And on Tuesday, a group of top Russian media officials, including RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, arrived in Minsk for an interview with Lukashenko, in a clear sign of Moscow’s support.
Lukashenko has also presented Tikhanovskaya and her allies as being anti-Russian and claimed she wants to see Russian eliminated as the state language, to be replaced with Belarusian. “I have heard about the program of this Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has supposedly made such statements,” she said. “It’s absolutely bullshit.”
In the interview with Russian media on Tuesday, Lukashenko conceded that he “may have stayed [in power] a little too long.” But, he continued, “only I can really protect Belarusians now.” And he addressed the images of himself toting the assault rifle while signaling to his opponents that he plans to stand his ground.
“My appearance with the gun meant one thing: that I had not fled and that I am ready to defend my country to the end,” he said.
