"A Minor Factor Can Lead To A Change Of Power In Belarus"

Russia won't care about us.

Former political prisoner, coordinator of the civil campaign "European Belarus" Evgeny Afnagel believes that Lukashenko's regime is in a vulnerable position. The opposition politician told about it in an interview with "Malanka Media." The site Charter97.org quotes a fragment of the conversation:

- Now the situation in Belarus depends largely on what is happening in Ukraine. If Europe continues to support Ukraine, if the Ukrainians are ready to fight, and they are ready to fight, although now they are in terrible, difficult conditions, in conditions of power outages, when people are forced to evacuate from major cities, including Kiev, in the difficult situation at the front.

Nevertheless, Ukraine is fighting and holding back the onslaught of the Russian army. The active phase of the war has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War. Russia, despite some successes in the first months, is losing. It cannot advance. The district center is stormed for a year, some small settlements are captured. These are talked about as great victories, but in fact the front line has hardly changed since 2023. Under these conditions, if Europe continues to support Ukraine, if Ukrainians are ready to fight for their country, they will win. Russia has very big problems right now: budget deficit, rising military spending. Even the Soviet Union was once hamstrung by the war in Afghanistan and the arms race, the fact that it had to spend a lot of money on defense. Russia has far fewer opportunities. And if Ukraine wins, it opens a window of opportunity for Belarus and for many nations that are part of the Russian Federation. If Ukraine wins, Russia as it is now will not survive.

Belarus is occupied territory, and Ukraine has the right to consider Belarus as part of Russia, as territory that is occupied by Russia. For example, the Ukrainians have been hitting Russian oil refineries. That turned the tide of the war in many ways. But we know that both the Novopolotsk and Mozyr refineries supply fuel for the needs of the Russian army and the front.

We should not forget that there are people in Belarus who came out in the twentieth year, they did not go anywhere. Some of them went abroad, most of them stayed in Belarus. Their relatives, friends, colleagues remained. Belarusians remember 2020. In such a situation, it will be enough for some, perhaps, insignificant factor, as it happened in Iran, for people to take to the streets again. It may be some economic problems, price rise, contradictions in the structures of power, because it is not monolithic and not as stable as it wants to appear. We cannot say exactly when and what it will be. But the experience of other countries, and more rigid dictatorships, if we are talking about Iran, shows that sometimes a small event is enough for all this energy, discontent, hatred of the regime, to spill out into the streets.

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