Current "president" of Belarus has been in since 1994, using fairly brutal oppression to keep his grip on power.
In the most recent election, the results seem obviously falsified. Massive protests in the streets, pretty much all foreign media has been expelled, sites censored, police dropping grenades on protestors.
What do we think, lads? One of the last remaining Soviets finally going to bite it?
Unless Putin marches in, in the next 48 hours, which isn't at all unlikely lets be honest - I think it will turn.
There seem to be suggestions already that Lukashenko has left the country, and what little reports there are from Minsk and other cities tonight suggest that many, many people are on the streets and government forces are rapidly disappearing/turning.
Seems like Telegram is the only way people are getting news in or out right now, but these guys are publishing a lot
>>27015 It's always the same with dictatorships. North Korea's great success has been controlling the flow of information out of the country so well nobody can tell which of the utterly batshit stories are true or not. This means they can get away with some utterly batshit things because if the details get out nobody will know whether or not to believe it.
I don't think Vlad is coming. It looks like a losing situation for him, the protestors so far are very peaceful, and historically Belarus has resisted any kind of Russian influence. Also, if he was going to come, I think he would be there by now.
There are growing reports of military and some police supporting the protestors now. I think it's game over for Lukashenko, but its going to take a few more days.
I can't fathom why Putin would want to get involved. I don't understand why there's this sort of collective fantasy that Putin is a sort of Scooby Doo Soviet dictator in disguise, just waiting to pull off the mask, roll out the hammer and sickle banners while ICBM trucks parade down the street, and restore the USSR to its former glory.
>>27025 The theory is that he would want to put down any kind of "will of the people" revolution on his own doorstep, because it would encourage similar in his own country. I don't think he's in the least bit worried tbh.
Putin will turn up if the revolution involved Dutch/Polish tanks rolling in; while its very much a "will of the people" - and it really seems to be - I don't think he can do anything. What's really striking is that there have been no counter protests (by the mythical 80% who voted for Lukashenko), and when you have literally the workers of the Minsk Tractor Works going on strike, change is coming.
>>27024 >historically Belarus has resisted any kind of Russian influence
That's a very short history you seem to be working with there. Lukashenko went as far as to discourage even the Belorussian language and the school curriculum teaches Soviet history - even today the Belarusian flag is repressed as far-right symbolism while the official symbols are Soviet imports. To add to this Russian subsidies petrochemicals can still be considered THE economy as Belarus gets cheap oil, refines it and sells it on.
This only started to change after Crimea where it became obvious that having your citizens deeply identify with Russia is a bad idea. Then came the cuts to Russian subsidies which is what really spurred on the recent rapprochement with the West. At least until last week Belarus was serving a purpose for everyone as a middleman under heavy Russian influence but which could broker peace in Ukraine.
But yeah, money's on Russia won't intervene because whatever comes after will still be heavily pro-Russia out to sheer necessity. Putin doesn't need to bail out Lukashenko and at any rate it's unaffordable at the moment. It's a very different situation to what happened in the Ukraine and I'm sure even the protesters are conscious that the new boss will be same as the old boss.
>that Putin is a sort of Scooby Doo Soviet dictator in disguise
No scooby doo stuff involved. If you look at how Putin has altered Russia's constitution and legal frameworks just to benefit himself and enable him to stay in power almost indefinitely, then he's at least not somebody we would lightly call a good democrat.
That said, I think there is plenty of exaggeration going around at the moment. Putin didn't take Crimea for the sake of stealing land from a foreign country, but because it is the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The pro-Western, pro-American revolution in Ukraine was a serious threat to Russia's unhindered access to its own naval bases in the area.
Russian politics tends to be crude. If there had been an anti-Western revolution in some Central or South American country where the U.S. has major military bases, then the Americans probably would have used all their clandestine political might to sabotage the revolutionaries. Putin did a quite probably massively rigged referendum to annex the whole Crimea peninsula. Same effect, different means.
But to think that Putin would send troops to Belarus is just nonsense. For what? To what end? This isn't the Soviet Union anymore that sent tanks into Prague in 1968. Putin may be an autocrat, but I am sure he's not stupid enough to come to the aid of a fellow autocrat who could be facing expulsion if there's really going to be a revolution.
At the end of it though, I think a lot of the protest against Lukashenko is secretly instigated by the West. The Americans are probably doing a similar job as they did in Ukraine in 2012-2013 and are heavily supporting the protesters and equipping them both with money and manpower. Except you won't read that in Western newspapers.
Nobody's calling him a democratic leader, he's an old fashioned oligarch baron plain and simple. Only the charade feudalism of neo-liberalism permits such figures to pretend to be democratically elected.
As such his aims and motivations are largely the same as any other country would be in the same situation. None of them involve getting your hands dirty to prop up a failing dictator, when at the end of the day you can just sub in one of your guys anyway.
>The Americans are probably doing a similar job as they did in Ukraine in 2012-2013 and are heavily supporting the protesters and equipping them both with money and manpower. Except you won't read that in Western newspapers.
No surprises there. They just always drop the ball immediately after the money shot.
