Belarus president says Russia willing to help counter protests
MINSK, Belarus — Thousands of demonstrators in Belarus again took to the streets Saturday to demand that the country’s authoritarian leader resign after a presidential vote they called fraudulent. In response, the president declared that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had agreed to provide security assistance to restore order if Belarus requested it.
President Alexander Lukashenko spoke Saturday evening hours after a phone call with Putin as he struggled to counter the biggest challenge yet to his 26 years in power.
Saturday marked the seventh straight day of large protests against the results of the country’s presidential election in which election officials claimed the Lukashenko, 65, won a sixth term in a landslide.
Opposition supporters believe the election figures were manipulated and say protesters have been beaten mercilessly by police since the vote.
Harsh police crackdowns against the protesters, including the detention of some 7,000 people, have not quashed the most sustained anti-government movement since Lukashenko took power in 1994.
The demonstrators rallied Saturday at the spot in the capital of Minsk where a protester died last week in clashes with police. Some male protesters pulled off their shirts to show bruises they said came from police beatings. Others carried pictures of loved ones beaten so badly they could not attend the rally.
Lukashenko did not specify what sort of assistance Russia would be willing to provide. But he said “when it comes to the military component, we have an agreement with the Russian Federation,” referring to a mutual support deal the two former Soviet republics signed back in the 1990s.
“These are the moments that fit this agreement,” he added.
Both the European Union and the U.S. government say the presidential election in Belarus was flawed.
A funeral was held Saturday for Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester who died Monday in the capital of Minsk under disputed circumstances. Belarusian police said he died when an explosive device he intended to throw at police blew up in his hand.
But his partner, Elena German, told The Associated Press that when she saw his body in a morgue on Friday, his hands showed no damage and he had a perforation in his chest that she believes is a bullet wound.
Hundreds of people came to pay their last respects to Taraikovsky, who lay in an open casket. As the coffin was carried out, many dropped to one knee, weeping and exclaiming “Long live Belarus!”
About 5,000 demonstrators gathered Saturday near where Taraikovsky died. They laid flowers in tribute, piling into a mound about 5 feet tall.
“It’s awful to live in a country where you can be killed at a peaceful protest. I will leave, if power isn’t changed,” said 30year-old demonstrator Artem
Kushner.
Earlier on Saturday, Lukashenko rejected suggestions that foreign mediators try to resolve the country’s political crisis.
“We have a normal country, founded on a constitution. We don’t need any foreign government, any sort of mediators, ” Lukashenko said at a meeting with defense ministry officials. He appeared to be referring to an offer from the leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to help resolve the political crisis in Belarus, a nation of 9 1⁄2 million people.
But he did discuss the situation with Putin, the first publicly known direct contact between the two leaders since the election. A Kremlin statement said Putin and Lukashenko expressed hope for a quick resolution to the tensions.
“It is important that these problems are not used by destructive forces aimed at causing injury to the cooperation of the two countries in the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said.