Belarus headed for election confrontation as Lukashenko cracks down on opponents

Coronavirus, the economy and the passage of time are undermining longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko’s popularity – but he shows no sign of weakening his grip on power, writes Oliver Carroll

Minsk police detain a protester during a rally against the removal of opposition candidates from the presidential elections (AP)

Sergei Kadomsky was one of the first to be detained – yanked from his electric unicycle by a group of plainclothes officers in central Minsk just after 7pm local time.

“They kept us for hours standing against a wall with our backs turned,” Mr Kadomsky, 38, tells The Independent. “A lot of people were finding it difficult to stay standing.”

The internet activist was one of thousands who defied police orders to stay at home on Tuesday, as the Belarusian capital erupted in protest following a decision not to register two leading opposition candidates in August’s presidential elections.

Nearly 300 were detained in the course of the evening’s protests – among the most serious of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule.

Many of the arrests were violent. Video footage showed flying police truncheons, with special forces pushing, elbowing and clotheslining the crowds who had braved warnings not to protest.

Occasionally, the demonstrators fought back, and in one case managed to rip a door off a police van.

The march in the Belarusian capital was mirrored by similar, smaller gatherings in four regional cities. Together, it marked the most significant protest moment the post-Soviet country has seen since 2010.

Then, Mr Lukashenko toyed with pluralism ahead of a presidential election in which he eventually claimed a massive landslide. But his riot police brutally crushed an opposition rally that followed.

This time around, the strongman is taking no chances.

On Tuesday, his election authorities confirmed they would block two of the president’s toughest challengers from running.

Viktor Babariko, a bank executive, is already being held in a KGB detention centre along with his son. He was arrested in June and has been served unconvincing embezzlement charges.

Valery Tsepkalo is a well-regarded former ambassador to the US, who worked with Mr Lukashenko before falling out of favour in 2016.

A third candidate, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested at a protest in late May. He has been charged with public order offences and faces up to three years in prison. His wife Svetlana, who has vowed to continue the campaign, may well become a unified opposition candidate, after being unexpectedly allowed to register for the 9 August election.

Ms Tikhanovskaya has taken up much of her husband’s strong rhetoric. In a video address released on Wednesday, she denounced police for “beating up their own mothers, sister, brothers and children”, and what she called “genocide”.

It is unclear what plans the authorities have for her. Significant questions also remain about her experience, lack of a political base and the traditional inability of the Belarusian opposition to unite.

“It will be difficult for the erudite, urbane supporters of Babariko and Tsepkalo to consolidate around her,” said Ivan Levchenko, a member of Mr Babariko’s presidential nomination team. “Tikhanovskaya and her husband represent a much simpler electorate, focused on putting bread on the table.”

Negotiations between opposition groups will start once the general prosecutor has replied to appeals from the barred candidates later this week – with rejection all but certain. The appearance of serious opposition candidates this year in a country much more used to sleepy subordination has surprised most observers.

For Mr Lukashenko it came at the worst possible time, with a sixth term threatened by a faltering economy, the tide of changing times, and the challenges of coronavirus.

For those able to look beyond the truncheons and handcuffs, Mr Lukashenko’s Belarus was for a long time held up as a post-Soviet success. It managed to preserve its Soviet industrial base, with the lowest unemployment and poverty rates in the region, and some of the best public services and wages too.

But the flip side of Mr Lukashenko’s Soviet theme park was huge inefficiencies that had to be propped up by tens of billions of dollars of oil and gas subsidies from Russia. The so-called oil for kisses deal has frayed recently, with Vladimir Putin demanding closer integration as a price for subsidies. At one point in 2010, Russia removed the subsidies all together.

The Belarusian economy has teetered on the brink of crisis since that shock, and the ravages of coronavirus have only made things worse.

Worried about the economic consequences of a lockdown, Mr Lukashenko took a fatalistic view and kept the country open. Instead, he told his citizens to seek protection in vodka, banyas and labour on the collective farms.

That laissez-faire attitude dented his prospects of holding on to power. Both Mr Babariko and Mr Tsepkalo said it played a role in their decisions to run. It is hard to judge how popular they were since private polling is illegal in Belarus, but it seems their challenge had the regime worried.

The people on the streets are very young, know nothing but Lukashenko, but don’t want to live in the past

Given the increasingly trenchant positions of both sides, the country appears set for a showdown of at least 2010 proportions. On Wednesday, Mr Lukashenko indicated he was ready to clamp down further, saying he would defend his country “using all legal methods”.

What is not yet clear is how Belarusians – especially the youngest generations who have taken an active role in the protests – will respond.

“The people on the streets are very young, know nothing but Lukashenko, but don’t want to live in the past,” said Sasha Filipenko, a Belarusian writer and journalist based in Russia since 2003. “Their generation breathes in sync with the modern world – in contrast with an old, stupid government intent on turning Belarus into the Cuba of central Europe.”

Mr Filipenko’s 2014 debut novel, A Former Son, tells the tale of Francis, a young boy caught up in a famous, real-life tragedy in Minsk in 1999, when an underpass collapsed under heavy rain, killing 53.

The fictional Francis falls into a coma, waking up 15 years later. When he does, he sees nothing has changed. Belarus’s newly elected president has turned into a president for life. The opposition has been crushed.

Mr Filipenko said he believed Belarusian society has moved on from that era’s sense of helplessness.

“Belarus is waking up,” he said. “It’s not in a coma anymore. It doesn’t want to sleep.”