Lukashenko engineered another election victory with security forces and an internet outage to defend the announced results:
“Outages increased in severity through the day producing an information vacuum as citizens struggled to establish contact with the outside world. The incident is ongoing as of Monday afternoon.”
Widespread protests followed the election, which saw authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko win his sixth consecutive term.
As I wrote last week, Lukashenko has just one redeeming quality.
But has Lukashenko gone too far in rigging the election (please note: "the scale of early voting — which makes tampering easier") and has he underestimated the desire of the people to end his rule?
Protesters took to the streets immediately after polls closed on Sunday evening — with a government-controlled exit poll predicting an overwhelming Lukashenko victory. The nation's ministry of internal affairs said Monday that "more than 50 civilians" were injured in clashes with police, who used stun grenades and water cannons to clear the streets. According to the ministry, 3,000 protesters were detained on Sunday, two-thirds of them in Minsk.
Will Putin use this as an excuse to seize Belarus and rebuild the Russian empire as represented by the USSR a little bit more?
Remember that Belarus is a potential launching pad for Russia to hit the Baltic--former Soviet but now NATO--states. The Russians practiced that several years ago:
It looks like the Russian Zapad 2017 exercise carried out last month practiced an offensive through Belarus to link up with their Kaliningrad exclave by blasting through Lithuania and Poland.
Do read it all. Given the Russian skill in lying, the exercise starts with ludicrously small NATO attacks on Russia which Russia responds to with a large offensive after easily fending off the attacks.
As a first step, a Russian invasion could settle for the Anschluss with Belarus without continuing on immediately to attacking NATO. And that is a serious problem for the defense of NATO.
So Russia controlling Belarus puts Poland in the cross hairs in addition to exposing Ukraine's northern flank.
UPDATE: Lukashenko won't go quietly:
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko warned Monday that the protesters who challenge the official vote results extending his 26-year rule will face a tough crackdown, deriding the opposition as “sheep” manipulated by foreign masters.
And will Lukashenko send those 33 Russian mercenaries he arrested recently back to Russia in exchange for Putin's help--I did wonder if Belarus basically took Russian military contractors hostage to sell to the highest bidder? Will Putin bid or will Putin use their arrest as a pretext to take over and annex Belarus?
Belarus is large and Russia would be taxed a lot more than their Crimea or Donbas adventures, but I imagine taking Minsk is the equivalent of taking all of Belarus.
UPDATE: Uh oh:
Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanouskaya said on Monday she refused to recognise official results that showed incumbent Alexander Lukashenko had won a landslide re-election victory.
No doubt the election was fraudulent. But will Russia exploit this by posing as the savior of democracy?
UPDATE: Security forces appear to be trying to kill and abuse their way through the crisis.
But the author's outrage over Polish "bullets" used--and shown in a picture--is apparently sparked by Polish beanbag rounds, which are a less-than-lethal round, as a quick Google search confirmed.
UPDATE: More links. Does Lukashenko survive? Is this a Romania situation where the ruling elite goes down hard?
Just what are the Russians doing? Do we see signs of military mobilization and movement?
UPDATE: The resistance is not over:
Tens of thousands of people flooded the heart of the Belarus capital of Minsk on Friday in a show of anger over a brutal police crackdown this week on peaceful protesters that followed a disputed election, as authorities sought to ease rising public fury by freeing at least 2,000 who were jailed after earlier demonstrations.
That is actual brave resistance to actual tyranny. But Lord help me I worry this is an opening for an Anschluss.
UPDATE: Jesus Christ, is Lukashenko going to invite the Anschluss?
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday he needed to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning street protests rocking the country were not just a threat to Belarus.
Mass unrest has followed Mr Lukashenko's re-election victory last Sunday, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets accusing him of rigging the vote.
"The aggression against Belarus is developing," he said in a meeting with government officials.
"There is a need to contact Putin so that I can talk to him now, because it is not a threat to just Belarus anymore," he continued, according to state news agency Belta.
And when this is all over, will we find that Putin encouraged the protests to engineer an invitation?
UPDATE: Uh oh:
The Kremlin said the leaders concluded the "problems" in Belarus would be "resolved soon" and the countries' ties strengthened.
"Ties strenghtened?" Is Lukashenko going to a fallback position of being the dictator of a Russian province if he can't be a dictator of his own country? Of course, it would still formally be independent what with the UN seat.
Protesters will find they have fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire if Putin is in charge.
We really need a new election there with options for Lukasenko to escape safely after losing. Otherwise the post-election unrest is an invitation for Russia to intervene.
UPDATE: Remember that the Zapad 2017 Russian military exercise assumed a foreign-supported uprising that Russia and the Belarusians jointly defeated.
Belarus has just 16,000 army troops seemingly weighted to the west of the country. There are 6,000 "special operations" troops which I assume are palace guards. And there are 110,000 paramilitary troops. So Belarus is much better prepared to fight their own people than an invasion.
