The striking feature of the raging ferment in Belarus has been the sweeping crackdown on opposition leaders, utterly in character for a country deemed Europe’s last dictatorship.

As President Alexander Lukashenko seeks to crush the biggest challenge yet to his 26-year rule, the crackdown has left nearly all main organizers of antigovernment protests in detention or exile.

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With Lukashenko preparing to meet the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow soon, his campaign has targeted the major figures in the opposition Coordination Council. It thus comes about that the Belarussian authorities on Wednesday detained one of the last leading members of the council to have remained free thus far.

The regime hopes that with leaders driven away or locked up, the organisation of protests ~ now a regular feature ~ will suffer.
Another among the latest detainees is lawyer Maxim Znak, a member of the Coordination Council formed to facilitate talks with Lukashenko on a transition of power. In a sense, the opposition movement has been considerably weakened, and for now the Head of State appears to have the upper hand.

Znak was taken out of the council’s office by unidentified people in ski masks. It was by all accounts a well-planned and ruthless crackdown as Znak only had time to text a message before they took the phone away from him. Belarusian officials have started a criminal investigation into the activities of the Coordination Council, accusing the entity of undermining national security by demanding a transfer of power. Several council members have been arrested and others forcibly expelled from the country. The dramatic change in the structure of governance is easier contemplated than accomplished, however.

The other prominent detainee and a leading light of the Coordination Council is Maria Kolesnikova, who was detained on Monday in the capital of Minsk. She and two others were driven to the border on Tuesday where the authorities told them to cross over to Ukraine. When they arrived in the no-man’s land between Belarus and Ukraine, Kolesnikova is said to have ripped her passport into small pieces to make it impossible for the authorities to expel her.

While she has been in custody on the Belarussian side of the border after the incident, her whereabouts were uncertain till Thursday. The plot thickens with Lukashenko dismissing the opposition as Western stooges. He has rejected demands from the United States and the European Union to engage in talks with the protesters.

The latter have binned the President’s reelection on 9 August, where he claimed 80 per cent
of the vote, as rigged. This has served to fuel the demand for his resignation. Trends suggest that he has no intention to hang up his boots not the least because dictators are loathe to give up the levers of power. For now, he can count on the support of President Putin. But that will alienate the people further still.