Lukashenko dismisses claims about revolutionary situation in Belarus

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has dismissed the claims about a revolutionary situation in Belarus as a myth, TASS reports.

"The allegedly spontaneous self-organization of society, speculations about a revolutionary situation coming to a head and ‘illegitimacy of elections’ and such like are all myths. In-depth analysis of the events that had occurred long before this year’s election campaign shatters them totally," Lukashenko said at a meeting with the country’s political activists, the BelTA news agency reports.

He stressed that protest demonstrations by the opposition that followed the presidential election in Belarus are not something new. He recalled that similar events occurred in the country back in the 1990s.

"What is happening today is not something unexpected or new to us," Lukashenko said. "Senior citizens remember far worse things. Many thousands of people took to the streets in the 1990s. Cars were turned upside down and Molotov cocktails hurled into the ground floor windows of not today's boutiques and supermarkets, but the apartments of ordinary people."

Nationwide demonstrations have engulfed Belarus following the August 9 presidential election. According to the Central Election Commission’s official results, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko won by a landslide, garnering 80.10% of the vote. His closest rival in the race, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, came in second, with 10.12% of the ballot. However, she refused to recognize the election’s outcome, and left Belarus for Lithuania. After the results of the exit polls were announced late on August 9, mass protests erupted in downtown Minsk and other Belarusian cities. During the early post-election period, the rallies snowballed into fierce clashes between the protesters and police. The current unrest is being cheered on by the opposition’s Coordination Council, which has been beating the drum for more protests. In response, the Belarusian authorities have castigated the ongoing turmoil and demanded that these unauthorized demonstrations be stopped.