After ruling the former Soviet state for most of its independent history, Lukashenko sees the walls closing in around him. “You are talking about unfair elections and want to have fair elections?” Lukashenko asked the crowd of workers, who shouted “Yes!” in response. “The Kremlin is not wedded to Lukashenko: it has had enough of him,” wrote Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Belarus seems far away, but it is becoming increasingly, uncomfortably close,” wrote Julia Ioffe in GQ. That support for Lukashenko is looking all the more tenuous as protests mount.

Source: Washington Post August 18, 2020 03:56 UTC