Issued on:
A massive crowd of protesters gathered in Minsk on Sunday, answering an opposition call for President Alexander Lukashenkos resignation and defying the Belarusian strongmans warning that “stringent measures” would be employed to “defend” the country.
Advertising Read more
Waving red-and-white opposition flags, protesters chanted "Freedom" as a sea of people, exceeding tens of thousands, according to initial estimates, made their way to Independence Square in the heart of the Belarusian capital.
“Minsk never has seen such crowds in its history,” said an independent journalist in Minsk in a Twitter post that included photographs of a packed Independence Square.
More than 250K already at the Independence square in Minsk! Its more than in 1990 when people protested for Independence.
Belarus will be free. pic.twitter.com/cUKTIKuKqo
— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 23, 2020
Authorities issued a warning to Belarusians against participating in "illegal demonstrations" and local news outlets published videos on social media showing water cannon and riot police with shields moving towards Independence Square.
Lukashenko warns of border threats
Protesters gathered despite an ominous warning by Lukashenko on Saturday that he has ordered his defence minister to take "stringent measures" to defend the country's territorial integrity.
Lukashenko maintained the recent mass protests are being instigated by Western countries, and ordered the army to defend western Belarus, which he described as "a pearl".
"It involves taking the most stringent measures to protect the territorial integrity of our country," he said.
The 65-year-old Belarusian strongman, who said he won a sixth presidential term with 80 percent of the vote in the August 9 ballot, made the comments while inspecting military units in Grodno, near Belarus's border with Poland, according to the president's press service.
The former collective farm director said that NATO troops in Poland and Lithuania were "seriously stirring" near their borders with Belarus and ordered his troops into full combat readiness.
NATO said the claims were "baseless".
"As we have already made clear, NATO poses no threat to Belarus or any other country and has no military buildup in the region," it said in a statement.
Both countries also denied the accusation.
"The regime is trying to divert attention from Belarus's internal problems at any cost with totally baseless statements about imaginary external threats," Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told AFP.
The Polish president's chief of staff, Krzysztof Szczerski, for his part dismissed the claim that Poland planned to violate Belarusian territorial integrity as "regime propaganda", calling it "sad and surprising".
"Poland… has no such intention," he told the Polish news agency PAP.
'We are not afraid'
Lithuania's foreign ministry announced that US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun will visit Vilnius and Russia next week foRead More – Source
[contf] [contfnew] 
france24
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
