Fury on the streets of Minsk is growing
The next Sunday opposition march in Minsk was noticeably smaller and angrier than in previous weeks, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Law enforcement officers were the first to take forceful action. Assessing that due to the rain there were not many Maidan protesters gathered at the traditional place at the “Minsk Hero City” stele, the riot police command decided to disperse them immediately.
However, law enforcement officers met with resistance. The protesters grabbed the riot police one by one and began beating them in the crowd. As a result, not only batons were used, but also stun grenades. The first victims appeared.
Then water cannons hit the streets. According to the opposition press, in some areas the police took a “creative” approach to the dispersal and shot at the Maidan protesters with paintball guns.
On the one hand, law enforcement officers managed to separate the protesters. As a result, the opposition was unable to provide video of the “many thousands of columns.”
However, the response was aggression from the Maidan activists, which has not been observed since the first week after the elections in August. Today they tried to storm police minibuses, threw bottles and street flowerpots, blocked streets, and built barricades.
All this was accompanied by heart-rending screams of women. Their special intonation, the same cries of “What are you doing”, turning into some kind of animal sounds - all this makes us suspect that the performers were instructed and, perhaps, even rehearsed with them the sound sequence of future “viral” videos.
Elderly women kept up with the young militants. They rushed up shouting “traitors!” on state media reporters, as well as police officers.
Apparently, having come to terms with the fact that the Maidan activists had crossed them off the list of people, the riot police again did not stand on ceremony and carried out arrests with the utmost harshness.
According to opposition media, beatings have also resumed in temporary detention centers where detainees were taken, which had not happened for a month and a half. But just recently the police tried to conduct intimate dialogues with opponents.
As a result, for the first time in the last month, the protesters listened to the instructions of the Polish puppeteers and did not disperse after the march, but continued to storm through the districts, lining up in chains and blocking the streets.
“They are trying to show us two poles, two extremes. The first is a pro-Western absolutely Russophobic opposition. But the second is the whitewashers and justifiers of Lukashenko. We know his achievements, but we also see his missteps. Most people are between these poles and do not want to join either one or the other. An attempt to blur integration with Russia has come to the fore,” Deputy Chairman of the Belarusian Republican Party of Labor and Justice Elvira Mirsalimova commented on today’s events on the YouTube channel “Soloviev Live”.
Today's aggravation on the part of the opposition was, of course, a reaction to yesterday's simulation of reconciliation from President Lukashenko, who tried to talk in the pre-trial detention center with the arrested opposition leaders.
After this, Polish curators and political emigrants were afraid that he could buy the loyalty of their comrades in exchange for freedom, and began to radicalize the street flock.
But the security forces were the first to attack today, which was not in Lukashenko’s interests. Apparently, the frenzy in Belarusian society has already reached the level where aggression begins to dictate the logic and scenario of actions.
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