President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday that a Belarusian sprinter who defected at the Tokyo Olympics had been “manipulated” by external forces, otherwise he would not flee abroad.
On the first anniversary of the election that the opposition claimed to have been manipulated to allow him to win, Lukashenko denied that he was a dictator and said he was not involved in the death of the opposition activist who was found hanged in Kiev last week.
“Today, Belarus has become the focus of the world’s attention,” Lukashenko said at a multi-hour press conference at the Presidential Palace in Minsk, the capital.
He stated that he won the presidential election fairly on August 9 last year and saved Belarus from a violent uprising, claiming that some people have been “preparing for a fair election, while others are calling for… Launch a coup”.
Thousands of people took to the streets in 2020, which is the biggest challenge to Lukashenko’s rule since he became president in 1994. He responded by suppressing opponents, many of whom were arrested or exiled abroad.
Last week, Belarus once again became the focus of international attention when sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya fled to Warsaw after a dispute with her coaching team, which she said led to her being ordered home.
“She won’t do it herself, she was manipulated. She contacted her friends in Poland from Japan, from Tokyo, and they told her-literally-when you came to the airport, you ran to a Japanese policeman. The person who yelled in front of her and took her to the airport was a KGB agent,” Lukashenko said.
“Japan does not have a spy agent.”
Authoritarian denial
The 66-year-old Lukashenko is at odds with Western countries that have imposed sanctions on his government. Because of the support and financial support of his traditional ally Russia, he has maintained power. Russia sees Belarus as a buffer against NATO and the European Union.
He refuted “the nasty things you threw on my face, saying that I am a dictator.”
“In order to give orders-I am a perfectly sane person-you need to have the right resources. I have never taught anything to any population, and I will not do it,” he said.
He reiterated the threat of dealing with Western sanctions pressure when necessary, saying that “there is no need to pick up the sanction shaft and pitchfork.”
After the Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania to fly over Belarus in May and arrested a dissident Belarusian journalist on the plane, after landing in Minsk, tensions with Western powers reached To a new height.
In addition, the EU neighbors Lithuania and Poland accused the Minsk government of trying to create an immigration crisis at the Belarusian border in retaliation for EU sanctions.
Lukashenko said Lithuania and Poland are the culprits.
He also denied any connection with the death of Vitaly Shishov, who led a Kiev-based organization to help Belarusians escape persecution.
“He is not alone to us,” Lukashenko said.
On Sunday, overseas Belarusians held rallies against Lukashenko in Kiev, London, Warsaw and Vilnius.
The Belarusian opposition said that there are currently more than 600 political prisoners in prison, and the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Zihanusskaya called for more sanctions against the Belarusian authorities.
“The regime is not ready to change its behavior. I think a new wave of sanctions must be imposed on the regime because they do not understand another language,” she said at a press conference in Vilnius.
“Sanctions are not a panacea, but they will help prevent repression.”
