Clock ticking on Lukašenka, Belarusians should be ready, Cichanoŭskaja says

August 8, Pozirk. Change in Belarus is inevitable, and Belarusians can work to create the necessary window of opportunity and be ready to use it, Belarusian pro-democracy leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja said in her opening speech at the New Belarus Conference in Warsaw on August 8.

“No matter how much [Alaksandar] Lukašenka is photoshopped on [the website of state news agency] BelTA, his time is inexorably running out,” Cichanoŭskaja said. “Whether it’s due to natural causes, a split in the system, or something none of us can foresee today, no one knows. But we need to think right now about what post-Lukashenka Belarus will look like: how to prevent chaos, how to restore the rule of law and a sense of security, how to hold free elections, and how to pull Belarus out Russia’s grip and return it into the European family.”

Recalling the mass protests that erupted after the presidential election on August 9, 2020, Cichanoŭskaja said that “did not win then, but we did not lose, as 2020 launched irreversible processes.” She played up the resilience of Belarus as the regime “obsessively tries to erase the memory of 2020.” She stressed that Belarusians possess a “partisan spirit” that will allow them to act decisively when a new opportunity arises.

A great deal has changed over the past year, with many political prisoners released, Ukraine rethinking its approach toward Belarusian pro-democracy forces and Lukašenka facing a realistic prospect of a tribunal in The Hague, Cichanoŭskaja said. She credited “human rights defenders, journalists, politicians, activists, volunteers, and naturally our foreign friends” with these achievements and called on people in Belarus not to “lose faith” and to “help each other.”