Lukashenko Slams Color Revolution in Belarus, as Putin Assures Difficulties Can Be Resolved

Aug. 15, 2020 (EIRNS)—Thousands of people are again on the streets of Minsk, demanding that Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko step down, after he again won reelection, with 80% of the vote on Aug. 9. The state’s Belarus News agency, Belta, reports that Lukashenko said this morning: “There is a need to contact Putin so that I can talk to him now, because it is not a threat to just Belarus anymore. Defending Belarus today is no less than defending our entire space, the Union State.... Those who roam the streets, most of them do not understand this.” He referred to the demonstrations as a “color revolution” being orchestrated from outside the country.

Following his phone discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin released a statement saying: “Both sides expressed confidence that all existing problems will be settled soon. The main thing is to prevent destructive forces from using these problems to cause damage to mutually beneficial relations of the two countries within the Union State,” in which Belarus and Russia mutually recognize each other’s visas.

Although there are many references in the press to the similarity of these actions and the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, the situations are very different. Belarus is not as dominated by conflicting oligarchs, old Nazi networks, and economic crisis as Ukraine, although the pandemic has caused economic hardship. Nonetheless, there have been extensive operations over many years from the regime-change operators in the West. George Soros’s Open Society pulled out of the country in 1997 when it was brought under criminal investigation and faced fines, but the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy is very active. In 2019 alone, the NED spent nearly $2 million and $1.5 million in 2018, with about 35 programs each year in regime-change training (“youth activism,” “advocacy,” “independent press,” “independent culture,” etc.)