Belarusians Must Be Ready To Seize Power

Square 2010 became a geopolitical factor.

13 years have passed since the legendary Square 2010. Coordinator of the European Belarus Civil Campaign Dzmitry Bandarenka, was an electioneering agent of the presidential candidate of Belarus Andrei Sannikov and the organizer of one of the most massive protests in the history of the country. The opposition politician shared with the Basta! Telegram channel his memories of the “December Revolution”:

“December 19, 2010, was the day that all Belarusians can certainly be proud of. When we approached Oktiabrskaia Square, it seemed to me that there were fewer people than at the Ploshcha-2006 (“The Square 2006”). When the column moved towards the government house along Neizalezhnastsi Avenue (“Independence Avenue”), it seemed that there could really be about a hundred thousand people. Minsk was illuminated with such a wonderful light and spirit of freedom. I thought this was the beginning of a revolution.

It is necessary to say that what is important in history is the actions, the manifestations of the strength of the people, the strength of the protesting people. If these are not military actions, then these are proxy actions – mass actions. This influences even the geopolitics of the state. The world's leading TV channels were broadcasting for many days the Square 2010 actions, news about the events in Minsk, the heroism of Belarusians who took to the streets, as well as the brutality of the authorities.

Once, at one of the conferences on democracy, I spoke with activists from Arab countries. They said that broadcasts from Belarus influenced them. We remember that the Arab Spring began at the beginning of 2011, when the dictatorial regimes in Libya and Tunisia fell. Revolutions swept through many countries. Indeed, today we can raise a glass to toast this day because it brought the liberation of Belarus from dictatorship closer.

It was funny when we came out of prison, some time passed, and in many pseudo-independent Belarusian media we were accused of “acting without plans” and that “we left young people open, and they suffered.”

We see from the example of Ukraine that freedom and independence do not come simply. You have to pay a very, very high price for freedom, and December 19 was just such a day, the Day of Dignity of Belarusians, when people spoke out against election fraud.

We knew from the polling stations that we had more than 20% of the votes. There was data from different cities about the actual election results. So, even taking into account the fact that 30% of the votes were falsified in the early voting (they were attributed to Lukashenka), leader of the European Belarus Andrei Sannikov won the second place. He then gained the number of votes that allowed him to go to the second round. Sannikov received more votes than all other alternative candidates altogether. Many people don’t want to talk about this, but it’s a fact. If there had been no early voting, Sannikov would have won the elections.

What was our plan? We hoped that Lukashenkф would not disperse the demonstration on the first day, although we were preparing for everything. Our task was to stand until the morning, and then hold a big press conference and appeal to Belarusians to continue the protests both in the capital and throughout the country. Then the authorities realized that events were taking a drastic turn, so Lukashenka, in fear and hysteria, gave the order to disperse the people. Unfortunately, they succeeded.

It is worth considering that there was no Telegram at that time, and of the independent sites, the clearest position took the Charter-97 resource, whose journalists were arrested that night. Then more than a thousand people were arrested, more than a hundred people were subjected to criminal prosecution, hundreds of people then underwent the “baptism of Akrestsina”, some were in Zhodzina and other prisons, behind bars.

All this gave a strong impetus. Our team of European Belarus, led by Andrei Sannikov, as well as the team of the Belarusian National Congress, led by Mikalai Statkevich, were preparing for the 2020 revolution. Protests were also held in 2016, 2017 and 2019. It is important to understand that revolutions do not happen by themselves, they grow on some fertile soil, and only then give results.

If we talk about our prospects, today everything depends on the general regional situation. It depends on how Ukraine can resist Russian aggression and how consistently the West will implement sanctions against the Russian economy.

I believe that Russia will collapse. It will collapse the way the Soviet Union collapsed because today it is a much weaker country demographically, economically, and militarily than the USSR once was. We are to prepare to quickly seize power and build a new Belarus, which will be a member of the European Union and NATO.”