There’s been a major development in the situation in Belarus:
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate, has reportedly left Belarus and is now in Lithuania. This was confirmed by the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius this morning, who stated she’d been “detained by Belarusian authorities for seven hours after filing a complaint against vote-rigging.”
Tikhanovskaya has also called for an end to the protests, and apologized to her supporters for leaving the country.
Not sure what to make of these developments yet. If Tikhanovskaya’s leaving was under duress — as is likely — it may well only inflame opposition to sitting/re-elected President Alexander Lukashenko. This is a situation that bears close watching, especially as rumors persist that Russian forces have been involved in responding to the protests already.
Here are the best available links I could find:
www.theguardian.com/…
abcnews.go.com/…
There’s an excellent diary by kalmoth on the Trending list that gives more background on what led up to this here: www.dailykos.com/...