Continued Protests in Belarus – week 11

Well, week 11 in Belarus and no clear resolution. It looks like this could drag on for a while. They did put up tens of thousands (maybe 100,000) protestors on Sunday and did start strikes on Monday. It does not appear that the strikes are universal. To quote from a couple of accounts:

BBC News (bolding is mine):

“Workers at some state-run plants downed tools and chanted slogans outside the gates.”

“The full scale of the protests on Monday is not yet clear, partly because of the authorities’ media restrictions.”

“A source in Minsk…told the BBC that the strike was affecting some major state enterprises…but they had not been brought to a standstill.”

See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54684753

ABC News (bolding is mine):

“But on Monday, while some workers did strike and a sizable protest took place in the capital of Minsk, it did not appear that strikers had been joined by significant numbers of workers at the massive state plants that are critical to Belarus economy.”

See: https://abcnews.go.com/International/belarus-opposition-calls-national-strike-key-test-protest/story?id=73842209

 

P.S. On the morning of 13 October Svetlana Tikhanovksaya, the main opposition leader, issued out a statement:

“The regime has 13 days to fulfill three prerequisites:

  1. Lukashenko must announce his resignation.

  2. Street violence must stop completely.

  3. All political prisoners must be released.

If our demands are not met by October 25, the whole country will peacefully take to the streets with the People’s Ultimatum. And on October 26, a national strike of all enterprises will begin, all roads will be blocked, sales in state stores will collapse.”

P. P.S. The picture of the detained protestor is from last month, I just happen to like it (“Beauty and the Beast”). She was identified over twitter (@A_Sannikov) as Natalia Petukhova. The arresting officer has not been identified. Picture came from @svirsky1 via @XSovietNews

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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