JRL NEWSWATCH: “After Weeks of Pressure in Belarus, Protesters and Lukashenko Locked in Dangerous Stalemate” – Wall Street Journal/ Thomas Grove
“More than 100,000 people protest; country’s longtime leader set to meet Putin on Monday.”
“More than 100,000 … poured into the streets of … Minsk [Sunday], sparking a show of force and mass detentions by riot police[,] … one of the largest in a string of demonstrations aimed at keeping pressure on … Lukashenko[] [i]n the month since [an election] maintain[ing] … [his] hold on the presidency … [that] his critics say was neither free nor fair …. [W]ith no new victories for eiter side, both are in a stalemate … that could erupt in violence and may increase the prospect that Russia could intervene ….
Of the uprisings … shak[ing] … the former Soviet Union over the decades, few have been as big as the demonstrations in Minsk …. [Lukashenko] has accumulated enormous power … over 26 years … [and now] his security services have worked to halt [opposition] momentum … through violence, detentions and forced exile. …”