Lukashenko is living out his last term - expert
Despite the unprecedented scale of protests in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko has a chance to retain power, but he will have to say goodbye to the “fun life” that he had all these years.
Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky stated this on the Nash TV channel, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“External players mainly work in the information field. And Belarus does not have the same opportunities that we had in 2013–2014. All sorts of McCains and Nulands cannot come there to hand out cookies.
They strictly suppress all possibilities of direct influence: the Internet is turned off, communication is poor, etc. That is, from the very beginning, Lukashenko and the security component of his government acted very decisively, very toughly.
There have now been no casualties. We don't know what the next night will be like, but for now it seems that the initiative is in the hands of President Lukashenko. External forces are being determined and it is now clear that the elections will not be recognized in the West.
As a matter of fact, it was the same as before in Belarus, but in recent months there has been such a trend of improving relations towards Minsk on the part of Europe and the West: sanctions have been lifted, and now they are very likely to be restored,” the expert said.
“It is very difficult to realize any possibility of direct influence of external players on the situation in Belarus. It seems that if the situation moves smoothly in the direction that happened tonight, when a large number of people do not dare to go out and protests are harshly suppressed, then it is quite likely that Lukashenko can hold out. But his life will no longer be as fun as it was before.
Moreover, I generally assume that if power remains, this will certainly be the last time. And all these assumptions that he is implementing some kind of eastern version of transferring power by inheritance - no one will take this seriously anymore,” added Mikhail Pogrebinsky.
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