A Very Belarusian Affair: What Sets the Current Anti-Lukashenka Protests Apart? Policy Memo No. 671

Unprecedented mass protests in Belarus against the rigged presidential elections on August 9 continue into their sixth week with no signs of abating. They are massive, tenacious, and draw on a remarkably broad social and geographical base. These qualities, combined with the absence of a single opposition political leader, pose an unprecedented challenge to Europe’s longest-serving ruler, Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

These protests also defy easy comparisons with the color revolutions. Despite continued police brutality and intimidation, Belarusian protesters remain resolutely peaceful, insist on the strictly internal nature of this political crisis, and repel charges of nationalism. While Lukashenka shows every determination to fight his people, he is facing a very different nation from the one he has ruled for the past quarter of a century.