The square did not pass: The Belarusian opposition put up white women instead of a white flag

The Belarusian opposition held an all-female rally this morning. Near the Komarovsky market (a symbolic place, the largest collection of signatures for alternative candidates before the elections took place here) about a hundred girls in white clothes lined up. In this way they protested against police violence.

When a police van drove up to Komarovka, the girls hurried away, defiantly putting their hands behind their heads, like prisoners. Similar events were held in the regions.

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Today's action clearly demonstrated what was wrong with the Belarusian protests over the past three nights. In the scattered videos circulating on social networks, there are practically no girls or people older than middle age. Everywhere there are young people of athletic build, sometimes behaving quite aggressively.

Other videos showing “beastly beating” also feature mostly young men, often with tattoos. The exception is a journalist from the nationalist Nasha Niva, who was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Only yesterday, when the riot police finally loosened up, random passers-by began to fall under attack.

All this makes it difficult to arouse sympathy for the protests among unbiased observers. And how textured the girl looked in a white T-shirt covered in blood. Or a touching old woman knocked to the ground. Sharpe would approve.

And it’s strange that we didn’t see this, because the pre-election rallies of the main alternative candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya had the character of just such a herbivorous protest: girls, grandmothers, boys in glasses. Either all this cuteness simply chickened out after the elections, led by its leaders, who fled some to Russia, some to Lithuania, or the initiative from the “cute” women’s headquarters was quickly seized by the Polish Telegram network, which openly inflated and coordinated the radical protest.

The forces were obviously overestimated: the jocks recruited from football fan clubs gathered tens of times less than the militant farmers on the Kiev Maidan in 2013-2014. And the Belarusian riot police, unlike the Ukrainian Berkut, was not restrained by anyone.

On Wednesday morning, the Belarusian authorities recorded their victory. The Internet was turned on (the Ministry of Communications continues to claim that the problems were due to DOS attacks from abroad). State media began to widely comment on the protests (even on Tuesday, the main news was a meeting on food security). Perhaps an indirect sign of the victory over Maidan-Ploshcha are the congratulations of President Lukashenko on his victory, which finally came from Vietnam, Nicaragua and Syria (previously only China and the leaders of the CIS congratulated their colleague - and even then, not all).

According to the state media of Belarus, law enforcement officers managed to detain both the protest coordinators and the cashier who distributed money to the participants of the “revolution.” In total, about 7 thousand people have been detained over the past three days. It is likely that the protest has actually been decapitated. Rare drone footage shows that even on the first night in Minsk, no more than 10 thousand protesters took part in the protests.

Now we will observe what price and to whom the Maidan winner Alexander Lukashenko will pay. Will the West introduce new sanctions, and will Russia finally force its obstinate ally to sign integration documents?