MINSK - Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visited one of the nation's big state-owned factories in the capital Minsk this week, aiming to show he still had support despite nationwide calls for his resignation.The decision of the last Communist leader of Romania to counter a budding revolution by busing thousands of supposedly loyal factory workers to a rally in December 1989 proved a fateful mistake.
And where Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev was resigned by 1989 to the loss of the Soviet Union's East European satellites, Vladimir Putin is today trying to reassert control over Russia's so-called near abroad. He said he'd told Putin about the threat, adding that Belarusian security was also an issue for Russia.
On Wednesday, leaders of the EU's 27 member states sought to thread that needle, saying at a virtual summit they didn't recognise the elections in which Lukashenko claimed 80 pre cent of the vote and a sixth term, while stopping short of calling for a new ballot. MODERN STATE Catastrophically damaged in World War II, Belarus was rebuilt under the Soviet Union to become one of its wealthiest and most technologically advanced republics.