Belarus: the beginning of the end?

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is not demanding to become president if she wins. She just wants the 700 opposition supporters and activists arrested since May, according to the Belarus human rights group Vyasna, to be released, and then a truly free election. It’s not too much to ask.

Alexander Lukashenko, pictured, has been the president of Belarus for the past 26 years, but Sergei Tikhanovsky’s wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is running for president in her husband’s place in Sunday’s election because the well-known blogger is in jail, and she may do well enough to force 'Europe’s last dictator' into a second-round run-off vote.Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

August 5, 2020

LONDON, U.K.—“Stop calling me a mustachioed cockroach,” said Alexander Lukashenko. “I am still the president of this country.” But that doesn’t sound very presidential, does it? Lukashenko has been the president of Belarus for the past 26 years, and Sergei Tikhanovsky, the video blogger...

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