Thread by @Telegraph

✈️Europeans gasped with horror when Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk to detain a young journalist.

But for many Belarusians it was just another day amid the staggering atrocities of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime

Thread 🧵
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/2…

🇧🇾Belarus made headlines last summer when Mr Lukashenko, deeply unpopular after 26 years in power, was handed a suspicious landslide at the presidential elections in August.

This triggered the country’s biggest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union

🚔Belarusian riot police viciously beat thousands of ordinary protesters, and hundreds of people were later tortured in custody.

The sadistic violence turned even more Belarusians against Mr Lukashenko and triggered a new wave of protests

In August, Lukashenko was seemingly a few days away from being toppled, but he deployed KGB agents to intimidate undecided factory workers and the protests began to fizzle out.

➡️After this the regime got even more brazen in eradicating even the slightest display of discontent

His behaviour has become increasingly reckless.

➡️In August Lukashenko flew in a helicopter over protesters, brandishing a machine gun

🛂 In September, Lukashenko tried to forcibly expel opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova from Belarus by driving her to the border, and had to jail her after the woman bravely tore up her passport

🗣️Earlier this year, in her first interview with an English-language media outlet from jail, Maria Kolesnikova told the Telegraph that she has “absolutely no regrets” about choosing a certain imprisonment over an exile.

Read more 👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/2…

🇧🇾The Belarusian regime has issued criminal charges against over 2,300 people since the election campaign began last summer, most of them ordinary protesters

💰 Britain, the EU and other Western nations condemned the post-election crackdown and imposed three sets of sanctions against the regime.

➡️But Belarus is largely reliant on Russia for trade so there is not much that Europe can do to hurt the Belarusian economy

📢 Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president last year after her husband was jailed, has been lobbying for stronger international sanctions against the Lukashenko regime for months, seeing that the current restrictions do nothing to keep the Belarusian dictator in check

“The time for statements is obviously over,” she said.

“Belarusians are expecting decisive actions and assistance from the international community"

Read more from @Nat_Vasilyeva here 👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/2…