New Eastern Europe podcasts. After the rigged presidential elections in Belarus and August ninth,
twenty twenty, the European Union stopped recognizing Alexander Lukashenko as the legal president
of the country. As Joseph Barrell, Head of European Diplomacy is set in
the European Parliament, the European Union has firmly rejected the fancified results of the
ninth of August presidential elections, and we have clearly said that Alexander Lukashenko lacks
any democratic residuus. We say about him the worst thing that one can say
about someone who wants to go in the country. You lack democratic legitimacy.
For doing so, we don't recognize you as the legitimately president of businessman nation.
No recognition from the West does not give Alexander Lukashenko stepless nights. During
twenty six years of rule, he built a strong structure of power. Fat
Rostas to address the doctor politician Belarussian political scientist, doctor of political science Bardo
Rogue Centralizovan. This is an authoritarian consolidated regime, which means that this authoritarianism
has built on a very extensive but centralized state and political structures. There is
a presidential division, which means that all administrative functions are subordinated to the president
and he appoints plant directors, Chairman of regions appoints mayors, that is,
mayors of large and smaller cities. Besides all the so called elected structures that
is parliament, local councils, they are completely controlled and people who are to
end up in these chambers of parliament or local councils are not checked in detail.
People who are not trusted cannot appear there, let alone members of the
opposition. Apart from that, there are administrative and ideological structures ideological divisions,
as was the case in the Soviet Union, ideologists representatives of the Communist Party.
They were at all premises, in all institutions and at universities, and
they guarded the ideological loyalty. Besides, there were pro state and there are
pro state non governmental organizations such as the Belarusian Republican Youth Alliance, whose membership
actually is necessary or obligatory. Over five hundred thousand pupils or students belonged to
it. In addition, the system of counterfeiting was so developed that it was
enough to change or influence the result of voting or the result of how the
votes were counted. Neither the observers were able to keep an eye on how
the votes were counted, and even the representatives of civil society could not get
into the electoral commissions. I'm not even talking about the national level. Even
at the local level there were always selected people who signed or counted the votes
as needed. I am no longer talking about the secret services, about the
preventative activities of the case AB, which simply destroyed any activity. In fact,
the opposition as such and the NGOs were fragmented, demotivated and could not
influence the political process in any way. So in general, this political structure,
if it was strictly about politics and the exercise of power, it could
largely be described as semi totalitarian. So no one could just walk into this
structure. They were supposed to be loyal to this person and carry out all
orders. So no one could just walk into this structure. They were supposed
to be loyal to this person and carry out all orders. You checked the
structure to some extent even during the crisis, as we can see, regardless
of such a strong protest, social opposition. This structure still exists, which
means it has not collapsed. Although there were indicators that something was happening there,
that people were leaving the administration, secret services and these organizations protests,
but we still see that the system itself is soldiering on. It is still
very much mobilized. He carried out repression on a large scale and to a
large extent. In this repression, this process of terror actually involved quite a
few people who are simply ready to serve this system to the very end.
Fiftystem. The system is still running, but there are exceptions and the breaches.
And Riastapovic was an officer an employee of the so called power ministries.
He decided that he could no longer be a part of the repression mechanism.
I worked in the structure of the Ministry of the Interior for ten years.
For two thousand and fifteen or two August twenty twenty, I was a senior
investigator in Minsk. Generally I worked with heavy crimes such as beatings, murders
and raps. Everyone has their own motivation. For someone it is a life
situation and a chance. For someone else it is a family tradition and for
yet another person. Work in the militia or an investigatives committee is a vocation.
Russian films and series, the heroization and romanticization of the image of a
policemen are also of great importance. I saw it very often in girls who
came to work for us on the county. They had been striving for it
all their lives. They started working with great enthusiasm, and you could see
the enthusiasm in their eyes. But after a short time this enthusiasm quickly faded.
It's not like in the movies the criminal. However, as a boggy
quagmire. Often it is also a chance for people with an education in humanities,
those who graduated, for example, in law. Everyone knows that lawyers
or notaries have average earnings. Working in the power structures gives them that much
more so, education really means a lot. As for arm on, the
situation is different. People who have no idea for themselves often go to it.
If someone understands that he is basically a murderer and a bone breaker,
I have two options, either to work in the field and spread the manure
with a pitchfork in the field, or to enter official structures and mock people
on the streets at the same time and regularly receiving a salary and living in
the city not in the countryside. Of course, we cannot say that only
fools. Some people without a life chance work this is overkilled. Please remember
that the army is a bublice, and if a young man gets a taste
for it and accept such a lifestyle, then at the end of his service,
I can get an offer in the army and stay in similar structures.
I'm not saying that they are just bad people. Often it can be simply
attractive to someone. It may be in line with their nature, physical development
and brotherhood. After compulsory military service, you are fit, you know how
to handle weapons, and here they offer you a stable job where you really
have to do what you can. That is why various special units recruit their
officers and officers from amongst such young people in the army. It is often
the case that someone just likes it as a sport. There's nothing wrong with
it. After all, some of these people also go to anti terrorist formations
and really want a defender state and nation against various threats. Therefore, the
situation is not black and white. Unfortunately, what the authorities are doing now
is also a shame for the secret services themselves. This destroy and disgraces the
motivations and experience that are really important for every society to work in the services,
that is, special units, especially for people who gain this experience in
combat conditions in different parts of the world. The situation in terms of earnings
in the power structures is similar, but certain requirements must be met in different
units. In the committee it is intellectual and mental predispositions that are acquired over
a long time, while in onmon and special groups it is physical preparation.
You have to take into account the potential risk to your health. This is
a life threatening job. Sometimes onmon men have a slightly higher salary, but
only a little Such an average salary is about one thousand rubles. I earned
a maximum of one thousand, four hundred, but only after ten years of
work experience. Of course, there are also benefits in the form of,
for example, an apartment allowance if you work in an another city. In
my case, a senior investigator who works with heavy crime is around six hundred
dollars in Belarus. It is an average salary, not too much but not
too little. Factory workers sometimes get similar wages, sometimes more for mince.
However, it is not remarkably. Hid in a store, you can earn
about one thousand, two hundred roubles. Not all investigators get that much,
however, I can talk about what only concerns the investigative committee. The workload
has increased significantly, and the pressure from the leadership by political affairs has also
increased. I have already mentioned stress. Therefore, much more work was done
there, but the salary was not raised. As for the armond men,
I haven't had a chance to talk to any of them recently. Therefore I
cannot confirm that their salaries have increased. In two thousand and ten, I
was seventeen years old and I was still under age, but adult fellow trainees
were with the officers on protest actions only as meals, and they spent all
the time on buses. The older students, on the other hand, between
the second and the fifth year, were formerly already rank and file officers.
They pacified their actions. I know about broken noses and ribs. They were
in the front line of fire, which means that they got baptized during their
studies. As a minor, we were not allowed to participate in the actions
by law. I remember when we were gathered in the halls and a Belorussian
television and propaganda about what was happening in Mince was playing all the time.
Then things went quiet for a bit. Basically, no one explains the situation
to you. During your studies. Access to information is really limited only Belorussian
television, propaganda and indoctrination. But at this age young boys are not interested
in politics, but in other matters. The elections in twenty fifteen years,
you remember, were relatively quiet. If we go back to the beginning of
the year, everyone thought it was going to be quiet. Nothing extraordinary will
happen. It'll be like twenty fifteen. Once these inadequate moves and government mistakes
regarding the COVID crisis appeared, we read that something could happen, but that
it would be like what is happening now. No one could imagine that.
When new candidates started to appear, I started to hope for some change.
I cannot vouch for the entire system. I'm speaking for myself. When the
arrests of alternative candidates started, all this social mobilization, those kilometers long queues
to sign the list of one of the candidates. People began to understand that
something was going to happen. There was also a fear that it would be
not as quiet as for example, five years ago, when the servicemen came
together for Ziharalski's candidacy, we knew that blood could be spilled. Intensive preparations
took about four months before the elect We assumed that there would be a quick
pacification, demonstrations would be quickly suppressed, and by mid August everything will calm
down, but that it will be as we can see now. No one
assumed that at all. The problem began after brutal pacifications when people were not
only beaten but also tortured and injured. One thing, when a stunt grenade
is thrown over the demonstrators, everyone will get scared, people will scatter,
and that's it. Another thing is when grenades are thrown into the crowd and
people are chased court and beaten with truncheons. When a frightened demonstrator is caught
in a dark alley and tortured by five brutes from the service, then they
started shooting at the crowd, perhaps not with live ammunition, but only at
the very beginning. There were over one thousand injured civilians in minced until August
sixteenth. I formerly walked in the investigative committee. Then I started showing aggression.
Such internal aggression absolute internal intolerance to the behavior of the authorities and other
services when tormenting peaceful demonstrators. In addition to such normal human disagreement with brutal
methods, there is shame and disapproval as the power structures that are there to
defend the nation begin to disgrace themselves. When the authority of your organization drops
at an exponential rate, when the actions of specific individuals disgrace the name and
the entire structure in which you work, then you don't want to deal with
that. After the brutal passification stopped a bit after August thirteenth, the authorities
also took care of us, that is, the brains from the services.
Attempts were made to conceal evidence of Suloviki crimes, delete recordings of beatings,
and so on and so on. When I went to their action to write
down the protocols, I saw a full picture of the abuses committed. Then
I realized that if I stayed there, the system would suck me up for
good. It wasn't just about losing authority, but knowing that being inside the
system, I kind of contributed to it all. I didn't want to do
this, and I made a decision. Enough, guys, I'm leaving.
Even when you can clearly see that something is wrong, some people need more
time to see the full picture. There will be more and more disagreements among
the officers. I think a new wave of redundancies will begin. People have
already started to leave. I have prepared a report on all the breaches and
abuses that I have come across. The report was very thorough and detailed,
with a list of officials related to the violations. So I formerly did what
the law requires of me, but of course I understood what it could mean
for me. I was curious about the reaction of the management of various departments
to my report. On August sixteenth, I resigned naturally. I understood that
you can't just let everyone go after that. Later went to Moscow. Literally
the next day. I found out that the leadership of the ministry was angry
and that I was wanted by the Belarussian services. Later, the persecution of
the Russian services began because ours must have issued an arrest warrant. I try
to leave Russia, but I have stopped by non Russian services that were already
in contact with the Belarusian ones. During my extradition to Belarus, I managed
to lose the tale of our secret services and secretly escaped through fields and forests
into Poland. I managed to lose the tale of our secret services and secretly
escaped through fields and forests to Poland. There are people who are still working
in the structures. Being in the power ministries you get soaked in it,
and after you leave it's very hard to find any desired job outside the structures.
There is also fear because we are served by former employees, and we
are also persecuted, especially if someone marks their departure just like me, but
the motivations are different. Let us not judge the entire system through the prism
of a dozen or so degenerates, although it must be admitted that because of
them, the entire Belarusian services lost their authority. However, more and more
officers understand that even when they are faithful and remain their service, they in
a way contribute to all the lawlessness, and therefore they leave. The situation
is tragic because really experienced officers leave who have some honor, can think and
have a chance for another job. Only half wits are left who are capable
of beating and punishing citizens. The atmosphere has changed a lot. There are
a lot of dissatisfied people inside the services. The tension is in the air.
Maybe also because you can't trust anyone. Even when they go to the
smoking room. People think about what, how and with whom they talk.
Someone can screen you. They can only fire you, but it could end
up being worse. You can lose everything. There is also an element of
revenge. We know that officers, even these brutes who later refuse to obey
orders, are also arrested, but they are often treated much worse than civilian
demonstrators because the power structures are traitors, and traitors are not forgiven. There
is also a social and environmental problem. Suppose there is a unit of three
thousand officers for the whole country. There are units within such a unit that
brutally beaten torture demonstrators. There are let's say five hundred, but they dishonor
the entire unit. Everyone understands that after the change of power, such an
individual will have a reputation as a torturer, and no one will mention people
who performs their work normally and reliably. You will have to prove your innocence.
And now such an internal rat race begins when former colleagues begin to silently
gather various pieces of evidence on each other. Now there's a huge division inside.
Some deal with civil and administrative matters, others with what we see in
the streets, and now those administrative ones are gathering evidence for their innocence.
Was the repression and brutality of the authorities sparked an unrest not only among some
of the officers of the services suppressing the demonstrators, some journalists on which the
propaganda mechanism is based also protested. As the journalist Hannelubakova says, there's a
choice of strike. I was in Minsk when the strikes of journalists government media,
in other words, government television started, and when I saw the strikes,
I talked to journalists who were working who had to leave because they were
either fined or they just didn't see the possibility of saying in this work.
They also said that they had a lot of questions for each other. Before
the there had never been such a level of repression. Never had there been
such a level of brutality before, and only now they felt that they could
no longer reconcile themselves to the situation. They could no longer agree to this
kind of compromise, and they left or were fired. They just joined the
strike. However, now the situation is stabilized a bit because the media works
with the help of Russian journalists and workers from Russian general or the strike has
been suppressed. However, this idea that images propagated by government media and television
will divide the nation, this is simply a lie, which of course all
happened before. But it's all the more cynical because people died, people were
tortured, people were severely beaten, as if it happened all the time.
In my opinion, the people who have remained in their positions, who were
still participating in this propaganda, in my opinion, are doing it consciously,
and that's what makes it all the more cynical. Despite the resignation of individual
officers, journalists or officials associated with the government, the regime continues. The
most important key positions are occupied by people who are absolutely faithful to Alexander Lukashenko,
including his sons, The family and its surroundings play a fairly important role.
First, his elder son, Victor is the Deputy Secretary of the National
Security Council. Here is Lukashenka's security advisor. He actually controls and watches over
all these power structures. He also understands that if the Lukashenka clan loses power,
he's in for a hard time. Besides the whole higher political structure,
First of all, the representatives of the power structures are completely devoted to Lukashenka
because they have both economic and political preferences, and so on and so forth.
My own the second son, Dmitri Lukashenka, is the head of the
State Gaming Commission, the lottery and so on, things that are also related
to money for money laundering. Yes, there is also a younger son,
Nikolai, whom Lukashenka always drags with him everywhere, and even with a Clashnakoff
machine gun. He was running down the street with his father down the Prespiet.
Deep down, maybe not even deep down, Lukashenka would like Nikolai to
become his heir, prepare him for this role. Politologist Pavo Ulsov explains what
drives people who support or at least function in the system created by Alexander Lukashenko.
Absolutely. First, there is appsolutely no rational understanding of what is happening.
I call it a consciousness skew. So people just believe that what Lukashenka
is doing is correct. The irrationalism is simply unconvincing. No facts about the
forgery, about the repression, about the killings. It does not affect these
people. They believe that those who come out to protest are either drug addicts
or some marginalized people bribed by the West, That the West wants to destabilize
the situation, that Lukashenka is defending the state, that Lukashenka was elected by
the majority, that this is all manipulation, and so on and so forth.
Yes, and this counts for most people, not only in the state
division, not only in state structures, but also among ordinary citizens. Secondly,
what we have is modern slavery. This means that people have loans,
they receive state preferences, some relief, They defend their own good because this
system has created for them at least good, comfortable living conditions. And when
they have a choice of political morality or political good, social good, and
their own good. They obviously choose their own good because they have served this
system sporadically and faithfully during all these years. Third, how to put it
as a kind of moral corruption. Judges, policemen, prosecutors, they have
already participated in political crimes, that is, forgery, in incorrect political sentences
against the opposition during these twenty six years. Most of the citizens do not
know it. For example, I meet such slogans quite often, how is
it possible, after all, where it comes from, this rape, these
falsehoods? I answer, well, it was for twenty six years. The
point is, most of the society that is protesting now has woken up.
The society of ninety four fell into a lethargy, and for them, this
tradition and the historical that took place during all these twenty six years simply do
not exist. They do not know about the killed representatives of the opposition in
ninety nine, nor do they know about the repressions. They do not know
that people have been imprisoned for several years for their political views, that they
have been tortured, that they have been fired. And when you talk about
it with those citizens who are now protesting against Lukashenka. They say impossible.
I did not know about it. I am not interested in it. People
don't know, people don't understand. They didn't have their own experience, they
didn't confront the system. Suddenly they were surprised that the system is so brutal.
They are amazed that this system is so brutal, although this brutality has
always been present, has always existed, and it is in this system that
the class that participated in the forgery and repression has already hardened. But this
is quite numerous people see them as Nazis or as communists who are in post
or Romania, who understand that if Lukashenka lost power, a very unpleasant future
awaits Bardo Bardo. The constant protests, but also the complicated international situation means
that the regime of Alexander Lukashenko will have to change. As sent by Pyotr
Rotkovsky, director of the Bilarussian Institute of Strategic Studies, probable the regime will
try to imitate social dialogue and work towards a constitutional reform that is to take
place towards differentiation, greater differentiation in the competencies of the president Parliament, local
authorities and the government. Here, in a sense, the reform will take
place towards democratization. The authorities will want it to be an imitation of democratization.
While any imitation may get out of hand, it often happens that it
gets out of control. As for the protest movement, there is so far
an extraordinarily strong determination to manage Lukashenka's dismissal to punish those responsible for violence against
peaceful protesters. On the other hand, some will also try to act in
this field, which will be allowed by the authorities. Many criticize this,
but I also think it is not a bad idea. It is not a
bad tactic entering their field in order to achieve your goals by using the opportunities
that are there to be offered. Podcasts are produced by Free Range Productions.