Lukashenka to protesters: This is the beginning of your end

in Front of the house of government on independence square in Minsk had embraced the end of the week, young women soldiers, who lowered their shields against the demonstrators. Flowers for the security forces and cheers embossed the images, also, white flags, white-red. Because the colors of the first independent Belarus, which catalysed the country from 1991 to 1995, icon, have become the signs of the protest movement against the autocrat Aleksandr Lukashenka. On Sunday afternoon, however, the official red-green flags dominated the picture in the square. Because thousands of supporters Lukaschenkas were gathered in the square, had been brought from all Parts of the country in the long Buskolonnen to Minsk; according to official information, there should be 50,000 to 70,000 people have been. Observers consider this to be greatly exaggerated; it had been more of 30,000 people.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

Finally, Belarusians, and should not be chanting once the masses "Get out of the way". But phrases such as "We love you!" Because Lukashenka was also at his first major event since a long time: or Else to watch him, the Belarusians in the past few weeks as he hits the security forces, Ministers or generals, and in the past few days, especially how Lukashenka speaks in front of officials with embarrassed faces and lowered heads of the revolution, risk and the foreign powers that had conspired against Belarus.

"I had to you on the course

call" "I wanted to call you to this place," said Lukashenka's supporters at the beginning. "You have a lot to do. You are to gather bread, prepares children for school.“ He, Lukashenka, was not a fan of courses or demonstrations. "And it's not my fault that I had to call you on the course." The man who ruled Belarus since 1994, said to the audience, as if it were still the same people, said to them, he in the nineties – and maybe him, some that were old enough had to hear, really at the time. Lukashenka has in Belarus, the Soviet state economy is largely upright, spoke of wages of twenty dollars, to the "you asked me not to have", and then appeals to him to privatize the farms, and of the appeal to him, "the inexperienced man, the people of the abyss away. That's what we did.“

Lukashenka said, together, had been created, "how is it that millions of predecessors dreamed of", namely an independent, sovereign state and a country that is "for all the difficulties, all the shortcomings, but a beauty." Still as the dead, said Lukashenka, he will allow anyone in the country to give away. "The time has chosen us and we have made it!" Lukashenka appealed, "to protect our country, independence, families, women, children and sisters."

Lukashenka rejected all Calls for new elections and international mediation offered. Tanks under the planes of the Nato are "15 minutes from our borders," he said. It's done an "expansion of military power on the Western borders of our country: Lithuania, Latvia, Poland. And, unfortunately, commands us also to our relatives in Ukraine and its leadership to hold new elections.“ Lukashenka said Belarus should not be to the buffer zone between the East and the West and not to the "garbage dump of Europe." Belarus had no need for exile-governments, but its own leadership. "You propose to us a new Power, suggest to us Nato soldiers, black-skinned, yellow schnäbelige, white blonde," said Lukashenka, according to the news portal Tut.by; in the official report on the appearance of the Passage is missing.

the address of the demonstrators and his opponents, he said: "you burned Lukashenka, you burned the first President, this will be the beginning of your end." But that did not deter Lukashenka's opponents will break not. Since Wednesday, they gather in unbehelligter in Minsk and in many other cities of the country. The strikes in dozens of state-run enterprises, which Lukashenka has referred on another occasion as a "knife in the back", and the Spreaders of the security forces, state media employees and on the weekend of diplomats are heavy blows to his Regime and motivate the protesters, in addition.