MINSK, Belarus — A day earlier than high-stakes talks in Russia, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the embattled strongman leader of Belarus, deployed his safety forces in massive numbers to discourage ongoing protests. However tens of hundreds of individuals nonetheless took to the road on Sunday to as soon as once more clamor for his resignation.
Regardless of an enormous present of power by riot law enforcement officials, masked males and what regarded like troopers, crowds of protesters gathered in Minsk, the capital, and in a number of different cities, lots of them waving the previous nationwide flag — a crimson and white banner that Mr. Lukashenko scrapped quickly after coming to energy in 1994.
The authorities, in an effort to cease protesters from coordinating actions, additionally ordered phone operators to chop cell web companies, a tactic used throughout an early spherical of protests over the disputed presidential election on Aug. 9.
The carnival environment of earlier Sunday protests was changed by rigidity and worry as law enforcement officials revived a few of the heavy-handed violence seen when individuals first took to the streets after the election, which Mr. Lukashenko claimed to have gained by a landslide. Greater than 400 had been arrested, the police stated. Many stated they had been overwhelmed on the time of detention.
As occurred in August, the aggressive response by security forces only intensified anger at Mr. Lukashenko, who travels to the Russian city of Sochi on Monday to fulfill President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his main backer.
“The second has come when it’s now not ethical to be impartial,” stated Svetlana M. Kopylova, 40, an economist who participated in Sunday’s protest. “I don’t perceive how within the 21st century, within the middle of Europe, the police can behave this fashion.”
The id of lots of Mr. Lukashenko’s enforcers has grow to be more and more troublesome to find out. Most put on masks or balaclavas and plenty of put on no insignia. A few of the worst examples of the latest brutality have come from males in civilian garments. In Minsk, some safety items carried assault rifles. In Brest, a metropolis on the border with Poland, the police used water cannons to disperse a crowd.
All through the day in Minsk, unmarked vans with out license plates raced across the metropolis stuffed with males who tried to forestall scattered teams of protesters from forming right into a single column. However tens of hundreds of individuals ultimately managed to unite within the early night, marching into the middle of Minsk from Drozdy, an elite residential space the place Mr. Lukashenko and plenty of of his trusted associates have houses.
At a time when practically all lively opposition leaders have been pressured to flee the nation or been put behind bars by Mr. Lukashenko’s strong safety equipment, the gang nonetheless appeared to be practically as massive as on the 4 earlier Sundays.
The protests on Sunday dashed Mr. Lukashenko’s obvious hope of having the ability to silence his opponents earlier than important talks on Monday with Mr. Putin. The Kremlin, asserting what would be the first assembly between the 2 leaders because the disaster in Belarus started, stated on Friday that the talks would give attention to growing the “strategic partnership and alliance” between Russia and Belarus.
Although the protesters should not typically hostile towards Russia, many have stated they fear that Mr. Lukashenko will press the Russian chief to assist an all-out violent assault on their motion. Mr. Putin introduced late final month that, at Mr. Lukashenko’s request, he had fashioned a “reserve force” of Russian security officers to be deployed in Belarus “if the state of affairs will get uncontrolled.”
One signal at Sunday’s protest learn: “Putin We Can Type This Out By Ourselves.”
In its flagship weekly information present on Sunday night, Russian state tv ignored the day’s massive opposition protests in Belarus and as an alternative featured a tiny march led by supporters of Mr. Lukashenko. It portrayed his important rival within the August election, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who fled Belarus below duress, as a software of the Polish authorities..
Mr. Lukashenko has for years resisted Kremlin efforts to combine his nation extra intently with Russia. However his standoff with protesters has made him more and more reliant on Russian assist. .
America and the European Union have each condemned the police violence, questioned the election outcomes and introduced plans to impose new sanctions on Belarus.
Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm supervisor, was beforehand seen as an erratic and extremely eccentric accomplice by many officers in Moscow. He has sought, with some success, to rally the Kremlin to his facet by casting the protest motion as a subversive Western plot focusing on each international locations.
Most of his distinguished opponents have been pressured to flee from Belarus to Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. Those that refused to depart have been jailed, together with Maria Kolsenikova, who averted expulsion to Ukraine final week by tearing up her passport on the border.
However the Kremlin can also be cautious of intervening too forcefully in assist of Mr. Lukashenko, for worry of stirring up anti-Russian sentiment. Not like protesters in Ukraine, who toppled their very own president in 2014, Belarusians practically all communicate Russian and harbor no deep-seated hostility towards Moscow.
“I like Russia, we’re very shut, however I don’t need to be a Russian citizen,” stated Vladislav, an funding banker who refused to provide his final identify for worry of arrest. “We worth what Russia does for us, however we recognized ourselves as a separate nation.”
Others warned towards severing ties with Moscow.
“Solely immature youth consider that we will reside with out Russia,” stated Elizaveta Kalinichenko, a development engineer. “We’re a small nation, we can not get anyplace with out it.”
Mrs. Kalinichenko, 69, stated she had supported Mr. Lukashenko up till 2015. She even reported her daughter, an opposition activist, to the police, she stated. However Mr. Lukashenko’s erratic conduct towards Russia and his disdain towards the Belarusian individuals made her change her thoughts.
“He did so much for Belarus,” she stated. However “we’d like a brand new, clever president now, not a collective farm supervisor.”
