Tens of thousands gather in Minsk for biggest protest in Belarus history

Tens of thousands of Belarusians have gathered in Minsk for the biggest protest in the country’s history, as an extraordinary week of rising sentiment comes to a close.Seven days after the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have secured 80% of the vote in a presidential election, his legitimacy is in tatters and his regime faces its biggest crisis since he came to power 26 years ago. Journalists at Belarusian state television announced demands on Saturday to report the news objectively, and the head of the Belarusian senate visited in an attempt to calm them down.The Belarusian ambassador to Slovakia released a video in support of the protests overnight, saying a classmate of his daughter was one of those who had been badly beaten by police, comparing their actions with those of Joseph Stalin’s NKVD, the secret police that tortured and executed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1930s.Lukashenko’s appeal to Putin, and his threat that those who continue to come out on to the streets would be “cannon fodder”, suggest that he is considering a new crackdown.