"If Belarus falls, the next will be Russia"

President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, Belarus, January 29, 2015. -

After a month of an unprecedented challenge to his re-election, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko estimated on Tuesday that if his regime fell, Russia would follow.

"You know, what we concluded with the establishment and the Russian authorities?

If Belarus falls, the next will be Russia, ”he said, quoted by Russian agencies after an interview with several Russian media.

"Do not relax," he added, also estimating that "if Lukashenko collapses, the whole system will collapse, followed by all of Belarus".

A 180 degree turn

After accusing Russia during the election campaign of seeking to dismiss him because of its refusal to submit to Moscow's ambitions, Alexander Lukashenko made a 180-degree turn, pleading for Russian support in the face of ever mobilizing crowds. views since coming to power in 1994. He has spoken to Vladimir Putin on several occasions about it, and the Russian president has promised to send troops if the protest escalates into violence.

A summit between the two men is expected in the days or weeks to come.

Russia, scalded by the revolutions of the 2000s and 2010s (Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan) in several countries of the former USSR, its traditional area of ​​influence, takes a dim view of any form of protest against the electoral legitimacy of often authoritarian powers established there.

Arrest of a protest figure

Returning to the arrest at the Ukrainian border on the night of Monday to Tuesday of opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova, Alexander Lukashenko said that she had been thrown from a car "in motion" by two other opponents then that they were fleeing to neighboring Ukraine.

“In their car, they put the throttle on, and threw him out of the moving car.

On the move ”, he insisted, affirming now negotiating with Ukraine the handing over of the two other opponents who were in the vehicle.

Kiev denied this version of events in the morning, explaining that Maria Kolesnikova had resisted her forced expulsion from Belarus and that faced with the impossibility of expelling her from the country, she had been arrested.

According to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, she tore up her passport so that she could not cross the border.

His two comrades, Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov, for their part, are due to speak to the press on Tuesday evening in Kiev.

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