Eyewitnesses report on social networks that Independence Square in Minsk is gradually filling up with protesters. At the same time, thousands of columns with residents of Minsk and representatives of striking Belarusian enterprises are still moving along Independence Avenue and Dzerzhinsky Avenue.
Participants of the action in Minsk are chanting: “Freedom”, “Go away”, “Lukashenka in the paddy wagon.”
At the same time, as the correspondent of RBC reports, before today’s action in the center of Minsk, many military men were gathered.
“On the approaches to Independence Square in Minsk, there are a lot of military men, they are literally in every side street. There was no such number of military men at previous actions,” the message says.
At the same time, the Minister of Defense of Belarus Viktor Khrenin issued a frightening warning, which says: “We cannot calmly watch how under the flags under which the Nazis organized mass killings of Belarusians, Russians, Jews, representatives of other nationalities, actions are being organized today.”
The army also took under protection all the memorials and monuments of the Second World War. “In the event of a violation of order and peace in these places, you will no longer deal with the police, but with the army.”
At the same time, the minister made his statement against the background of the “Minsk – Hero City” stela, around which protests began to gather on the first evening after the completion of the presidential elections in Belarus on August 9.