Well, large protests in Belarus have disappeared but they are still doing a number of smaller protests. This weekend the Belarus police detained/arrested around 100 protestors. Meanwhile protests have exploded in Russia. On Saturday, they started in the far east in the Siberian cities of Vladivostok and Kharbarovsk and erupted across dozens of cities across Russia (90 cities according to one count). They culminated in large protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Russian government claimed 4,000 protestors in Moscow, but it looked like a lot more than that in the videos I have seen One estimate was 15,000 gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow (picture of protestors in Pushkin Square is shown above). The police have detained/arrested over 3,300 according to one independent Russian source (OVD-Info).
We have seen continued protests in Kharborovsk that have been going on since July 2020, but this is a nation-wide explosion. Not sure how to evaluate it or measure its impact. We have seen several governments overthrown in Eastern Europe: Euromaiden (Ukraine: 2013-2014), the Orange Revolution (Ukraine: 2004-2005) and the Rose Revolution (Georgia: 2003). Is this serious enough to threaten Putin’s hold on power? I have no way of evaluating that at the moment. I did think that Lukashenko, President of Belarus, was close to being removed, and that may well be the case yet, especially if the protests in Belarus get rejuvenated.
By the way, the Aleksei Navalny video that is partly responsible stirring up these protests is here: Дворец для Путина. История самой большой взятки – YouTube
It is two hours, in Russian with English subtitles and I heard it is worth watching, is well researched and makes a fairly convincing case. It has 84.6 86.4 93.3 million views so far.