Factory strike leader and Tikhanovskaya aide held as Lukashenko releases video of himself armed with rifle

Belarusian authorities arrested two opposition leaders on Monday, as a showdown between the authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and a broad coalition of protesters continued into a third week.

Police detained Sergei Dylevsky, a factory worker who has become a prominent strike leader, and Olga Kovalkova, an aide to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition politician who stood against Lukashenko in elections earlier this month but was forced to flee the country after the vote.

Protesters remain defiant but there is a sense of foreboding as embattled Lukashenko digs in

“During this week, we have lived many lives,” Maria Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition, said in a video address to supporters on Friday. “For a week, Belarusians have been on an emotional seesaw: pain, fear, rising spirits, apathy, pride, helplessness, hope and happiness.”

Life in Belarus has indeed been an emotionally exhausting experience in recent days, as rapid swings in momentum seemingly change the atmosphere overnight. Peaks of adrenaline, when the 26-year regime of Alexander Lukashenko seems to be tottering on the edge of the precipice, quickly give way to troughs of despair. And then the cycle begins again.

Investigation begun into ‘calls for actions aimed at undermining national security’

Prosecutors in Belarus have accused the opposition of trying to seize power and opened a criminal case against them, as protests against the 26-year regime of Alexander Lukashenko continue.

The announcement raises the possibility of trials and jail time for the leaders of a coordination council, set up this week, that includes opposition politicians, factory representatives and the Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is appealing to EU leaders to disregard the results of the election on 9 August, calling them fraudulent. In the statement issued from Lithuania, where she is exiled, she said: 'I call on you to support the awakening of Belarus'. Tikhanovskaya claimed the election results were falsified and protesters had been beaten and tortured

More than a week after a sham election, public rage has not died down

“And what is it, what is it that they want / Centuries despised: those deaf, blind ones? / To be called people.” These words by Janka Kupala, Belarus’s national poet, published in the early 1900s, have come to mind in recent days as protests have rippled through the nation. Twenty-six years after Alexander Lukashenko came to power in the Republic of Belarus’ first and last democratic elections – almost immediately stripping the country of any ambitions to recover its national language, democratic process or historic myths and symbols after more than 70 years under the Soviet yoke – Belarus and Belarusians are seeing for the first time a fighting chance at meaningful politics and civic rights. Make no mistake, a people once described as the “dark, despised ones” (ciomny, pahardžany narod) have crossed a point of no return.

Olga Shparaga, a leading Belarusian political philosopher (whom I work alongside at the European College of Liberal Arts), described the emotions of fellow protesters in a phone conversation last Wednesday morning: “People are completely infuriated, ready to go wherever they need. This is not the time to think, but to act.” The protests followed the sham election on 9 August: the election commission gave Lukashenko approximately 80% of the vote when in all likelihood the main opposition actually won by a landslide. Unable to take these lies any longer, Belarusians took to the polling stations and streets in peaceful protest, only to be brutally attacked, gassed and shot at by riot police.

Opposition protesters turned out in their tens of thousands in Minsk, while supporters of Alexander Lukashenko also held rallies

Alexander Lukashenko claims Vladimir Putin has offered him ‘comprehensive help’

Tens of thousands of Belarusians have gathered in Minsk for the biggest protest in the country’s history, as an extraordinary week of rising sentiment comes to a close.

Seven days after the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have secured 80% of the vote in a presidential election, his legitimacy is in tatters and his regime faces its biggest crisis since he came to power 26 years ago. The mood at Sunday’s rally was stoked further by egregious police violence against thousands of protesters earlier in the week.