Konstantin Sonin: Summer of the Parasite

There is no chance that Lukashenka will regain his popularity - and he will not have to keep people in prison and beat passers-by - there is no chance of this

Terrible videos from Minsk. The police beat up children and youth to protect a dictator who has gone mad. There is no point in this - Lukashenka remained in prison for a year, or five - this year or five years will consist of imprisonment (several presidential candidates are in prison) and beatings in the streets. There is no chance that he will regain popularity - and he will not have to keep people in prison and beat passers-by - there is no chance of that. You can defeat opposition, but you cannot defeat old age.

In my opinion, there have never been such cases in history - for an old, unpopular dictator to become popular again. If Lukashenka achieved anything in the first ten years, he buried everything in the last. The idiotic reaction to the coronavirus has finished off the remnants of popularity - if you have to put opponents in jail, this is a sure sign that there is no popularity. There were dictators who started with beatings, prisons and executions and then “calmed everything down”, but at this stage – after twenty-five years in power – there is no more. I hope that the Minsk security forces understand this too - and get rid of the freak before he orders not to beat citizens, but to shoot at them.

Source