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Belarus’s Leader Vows to Crush Protests, Claiming a Landslide Election Win Belarus’s Leader Vows to Crush Protests After Claiming Landslide Election Win
(about 1 hour later)
MINSK, Belarus — The embattled president of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, on Monday claimed a landslide victory in elections this weekend and vowed to crush the protests that have presented the biggest popular challenge he has faced in his 26 years of authoritarian rule. MINSK — A day after the leader of Belarus, often called “Europe’s last dictator,” claimed a landslide re-election victory, his capital slipped into mayhem late on Monday as protesters barricaded streets and riot police officers beat back crowds of demonstrators with violent baton charges, stun grenades and rubber bullets.
The police clashed with largely peaceful protesters across the Eastern European country on Sunday night, hours after the national vote, which the opposition dismissed as blatantly rigged. The Ministry of Interior, which controls police forces loyal to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, reported late Monday evening that one protester had died during a confrontation with security forces from an “unidentified explosive device” that detonated in his hand and caused injuries “incompatible with life.”
Mr. Lukashenko appeared determined to cling to power and ignore protesters’ demands that he resign. On Monday, he boasted of a record turnout in the election, and official preliminary counts gave him more than 80 percent of the vote. The authorities described what began as peaceful protests as “riots” and vowed to crush demonstrators who have taken to the streets for the past two nights in Minsk, the capital, and in towns across the country.
He insisted that the protests were being directed from abroad by people seeking to replicate the 2014 Ukraine uprising that began at Kyiv’s central Maidan square. Struggling to contain public fury over a fraud-tainted election that gave Mr. Lukashenko his sixth term in office, the government on Monday shut down subway stations, sealed off roads and poured armed riot police officers into the center of Minsk.
“We will not allow the country to be torn apart,” Mr. Lukashenko said in comments carried by Belarus’s state news agency, Belta. “As I have warned, there will be no Maidan, no matter how much anyone wants one. People need to quiet down and calm down.” By nightfall, security forces and protesters were clashing violently in the capital, and in Brest, a city in the west of Belarus on the border with Poland, as well as in several other towns.
His comments came in the wake of a violent crackdown on protesters after the polls closed. Stun grenades and rubber bullets were directed at the crowd in the capital, Minsk, on Sunday night. A police truck drove into a group of demonstrators and left people bloodied on the streets. And masked riot police officers roamed the city and could be seen making arrests that appeared to be arbitrary. The unidentified protester killed on Monday is the first confirmed death during the postelection demonstrations. Another protester was reported to have been killed on Sunday when a police vehicle drove into him, but officials denied this.
The authorities said that 1,000 people had been detained in Minsk and 2,000 others elsewhere in the country. More than 50 citizens, as well as 39 police officers, were injured in the clashes, officials said. Riot police officers in full body armor blocked a busy Minsk avenue leading to a war memorial where thousands of protesters had gathered on Sunday to denounce Mr. Lukashenko’s re-election. He claimed a resounding victory with 80 percent of the vote, but the results were denounced as fraudulent by both the opposition and international governments.
A Belarus human-rights group, Vesna, said one protester had died after being run over by the police truck, according to Russia’s Tass state news agency, though Belarus’s Health Ministry said that there had been no deaths. As darkness fell on Monday, scores of people who tried to reach the memorial were arrested and journalists in the area reported being targeted by rubber bullets fired by unknown security agents.
On the Telegram messaging network, the protesters’ prime means of communication, one of the most popular accounts in Belarus called for renewed demonstrations on Monday evening and for a nationwide strike on Tuesday. The internet, which was largely shut down in Belarus on Sunday, appeared to remain down in much of the country on Monday. In a nearby downtown area, protesters swarmed across another busy thoroughfare but were quickly driven away by charging riot police. Dozens more were arrested, including some people who had merely been walking nearby.
“The dictator has started a war,” read the message on the Telegram account, Nexta, urging people to go to hardware stores to stock up on protective equipment and to prepare first-aid kits. “These are not arrests, these are kidnappings, random peaceful people are just grabbed off the street,” said Yuri Puchila, 29, an artist.
In recent weeks, Belarus — a former Soviet republic between Russia and Poland — has experienced its biggest surge in public discontent since Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, first won the presidency in 1994. Mr. Lukashenko’s tight grip on a loyal security apparatus has in the past quickly curbed postelection protests. But this time, Mr. Puchila said, is different, because the scale of fraud in Sunday’s vote was so big and obvious.
The coronavirus pandemic — the seriousness of which Mr. Lukashenko consistently played down — exacerbated popular anger over years of political and economic stagnation. A rift between Mr. Lukashenko and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a key ally for Belarus, has threatened the economy, with Russia increasingly reluctant to bankroll Belarus through cut-price oil deals. “I don’t think this will end with nothing. People will go on strike. I, for instance, won’t pay my taxes anymore,” he said.
“I am just tired of all the lies. Every word he says is a lie,” Galina M. Remizova, 68, a retiree, said of Mr. Lukashenko in an interview near the protests on Sunday night while masked riot police officers patrolled nearby. “He is just like a husband who is not loved anymore.” Violent clashes were also reported in Brest, with demonstrators blocking roads with concrete benches and throwing broken paving stones at riot police officers, who responded by firing stun grenades.
Mr. Lukashenko’s principal challenger in Sunday’s election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, said at a news conference on Monday that she believed the official results were false and that she had in fact won, according to Tass. Internet service, which had been widely used by Mr. Lukashenko’s opponents to organize and to share news of polling irregularities and police brutality, was shut down.
“We are for peaceful change,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said. “The measures that the authorities used were disproportionate.” After protests first broke out on Sunday evening, triggered by the release of a preliminary vote count that gave Mr. Lukashenko an implausibly wide margin of victory, the president vowed on Monday to crush unrest and prevent Belarus staging a repeat of the 2014 uprising in Ukraine.
The protests escalated after the polls closed on Sunday evening, with thousands of people in the streets of Minsk calling for Mr. Lukashenko to resign. “We will not allow the country to be torn apart,” Mr. Lukashenko said in comments carried by Belarus’s state news agency, Belta. “As I have warned, there will be no Maidan, no matter how much anyone wants one,” he added, referring to Ukrainian protests in Kyiv’s Maidan square that ultimately ousted a president. “People need to quiet down and calm down.”
Lines of riot police officers tried to prevent disparate groups of protesters from gathering at an obelisk commemorating World War II in the center of the city. Protesters blocked a major avenue near the memorial, then faced off with officers who were backed by military-style trucks and deployed water cannons, stun grenades and rubber bullets. The principal opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who, according to partial official results, garnered only 10 percent of the vote, said at a news conference on Monday in Minsk that she believed the results had been falsified and that she, not Mr. Lukashenko, had won. She stopped short of urging supporters to take to the streets but vowed to challenge the results.
At one point, a police truck skirted the crowd, striking several protesters. Ambulances lined up to pick up the injured, the pavement nearby stained with blood. A man could be seen being loaded into an ambulance with wounds to his abdomen that appeared to have been left by rubber bullets. Ms. Tikhanovskaya vanished for several hours on Monday, with supporters claiming that she had been taken captive at the Central Election Commission, where she had gone to challenge the results. The head of Belarus’s secret police, still known by its Soviet-era name, the K.G.B., was later quoted by news agencies as saying that his agency had foiled an assassination attempt on the opposition leader.
Mr. Putin appeared prepared to continue his support for Mr. Lukashenko, despite the rift between the two, which widened late last month when Belarus arrested 33 Russians whom it accused of being mercenaries sent to disrupt the election. The Russian president issued a terse statement on Monday congratulating Mr. Lukashenko on his re-election. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the United States is “deeply concerned about the conduct” of Sunday’s election, which he said “was not free and fair.” He urged the government to refrain from the use of force and to release those wrongfully detained.
“I expect that your official duties will foster the further development of mutually beneficial Russian-Belarusian relations in all spheres,” Mr. Putin said, which he said were in the “fundamental interests of the brotherly peoples of Russia and Belarus.” The authorities in Belarus said that 1,000 people had been detained in Minsk during Sunday night’s clashes and another 2,000 elsewhere in the country. More than 50 citizens, as well as 39 police officers, were injured, officials said.
Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Minsk, and Anton Troianovski from Moscow. Mr. Lukashenko first took power after an election in 1994, the last time Belarus held a poll judged reasonably free and fair by outside observers. He showed no inclination on Monday to bow to opposition demands for a recount of the votes cast on Sunday or to negotiate with rivals he mocked as “sheep” led astray by foreigners.
The European Union did not denounce the election outright but did issue a statement saying that “Belarusian people now expect their votes to be counted accurately.”
Among a handful of countries that endorsed the election results unequivocally were China, which is building a huge industrial zone near Minsk, and Russia, Belarus’s powerful eastern neighbor.
Russia’s relations with Mr. Lukashenko have soured dramatically in recent weeks, particularly after Belarus in late July arrested what it said were 33 Russian mercenaries intent on disrupting the election. But the two countries now seem eager to patch up their frayed alliance. Belarus on Monday released three Russian journalists detained for reporting in the country without proper accreditation.
Whatever Mr. Lukashenko’s failings in Russian eyes, the Kremlin still views the veteran 65-year-old autocrat as preferable to his rivals, who would like to see better relations with the West.
In a congratulatory message to Mr. Lukashenko, President Vladimir V. Putin, who described Russia and Belarus as “brotherly nations,” restated his desire for “closer cooperation within the Union State,” a stalled 1990s project that would effectively merge the two countries and one that Mr. Lukashenko has resisted reviving.
State-controlled Russian television has in the past often scoffed at Mr. Lukashenko, a former state farm manager, as a buffoon and ingrate. Its coverage sharply shifted on Monday to paint him as a resolute leader fighting to defend his country against the machinations of Western intelligence services.
This matched Mr. Lukashenko’s own account of the mayhem that has gripped much of his country. On Monday, he claimed that protests, along with the country’s internet shut-off, had been engineered from abroad, accusing Britain, Poland and the Czech Republic of “controlling” demonstrators.
Poland, Belarus’s neighbor to the west, infuriated Mr. Lukashenko on Monday by calling for an emergency summit meeting of European leaders to discuss how to respond to what it denounced as a fraudulent election and needlessly violent police action against protesters.
Britain condemned the election as “seriously flawed” and the Czech Republic said it “cannot be labeled free and democratic.”
The European Union imposed tough sanctions on Belarus in 2004, after an earlier round of repression, but lifted most of these in 2016, hoping that Mr. Lukashenko might moderate his autocratic tendencies.
With those hopes now in tatters after the flawed election and the violence that followed, pressure is growing for a new wave of sanctions.
But Mr. Lukashenko could be saved by Hungary, whose own authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, visited Minsk in June and called for an end to all efforts to punish Belarus. European Union sanctions require the assent of all member countries, meaning that Hungary could block any push to take action against Belarus.