Alexander Lukashenko’s main competitor in the presidential elections in Belarus, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania on Tuesday, addressed the people.
Videos of Tikhanovskaya’s address were posted on social networks, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I ask all mayors of cities on August 15 and 16 to organize mass meetings in every city,” Tikhanovskaya said.
Thus, the candidate, who is not an independent figure, is trying to strike a blow at the bureaucratic vertical of Belarus.
She also thanked the law enforcement officers who “refused to carry out criminal orders” (in fact, there were only a few of them) and the enterprise workers who joined the protests.
According to the liberal Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov, the joining of workers in the protest is the only thing that forced Lukashenko to make more than some concessions. (Since yesterday, riot police have significantly reduced the intensity of “cleansing operations” and arrests; the detainees were previously released from the pre-trial detention center).
“What made Lukashenko switch from exclusively forceful actions to hybrid ones? Exclusively the position of the factory teams. He was confident that the workers were on his side - against students, businessmen and intellectuals. But it’s not like that,” Venediktov wrote in his Telegram channel.
Today, several more industrial enterprises joined the protests.
Let us remind you that on Tuesday state media played a video in which Tikhanovskaya calls for abandoning the protests. The KGB of Belarus stated that they intended to make a “sacred sacrifice” out of her. Tikhanovskaya released another video on the same day, where she talked confusingly about the difficult choice she made for the sake of her children.