Russia watchers are fond of talking of an “August surprise,” with the month’s rich pedigree of shocks like the 2008 Georgian War. This year that surprise could easily come from Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where veteran authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, battered by his mishandling of the pandemic that has caused almost 70,000 cases in a country of fewer than 10 million people, has been rocked by mass protests and a sudden surge in opposition confidence.
The elections this week could just as easily see the pro-democracy movement establish itself, fizzle out, or even trigger a Russian power play—at which the arrest of so-called Russian mercenaries in Minsk might hint. Seizing on the concept of such Kremlin-deployed “little green men” to paint himself as the savior of Belarusian independence, Lukashenko has warned that “an attempt to organize a massacre in the center of Minsk is already obvious.”
