“The Belarusians have lost their patience,” said Viktor Babariko in an Interview before his arrest. The candidates aspiring for the presidential election in Belarus on 9. August spoke about the will to break with Aleksandr Lukashenka, the reigns in Minsk since 1994, highlighted his experience as a “Manager” of a Bank, and scourged Lukaschenkas negligence in dealing with Corona as “genocide”.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

F. A. Z.

surveys of the autocrat has said, but in Online voting, he lost to Babariko significantly. So Lukaschenkas investigators presented at the end of last week, a criminal investigation for money laundering and fraud in the Belgasprombank, the Babariko for 20 years has led to, before he resigned in may, the candidacy to seek.

You need for the registration as a candidate 100,000 signatures, Belarus has about ten million inhabitants. On Thursday morning, a day before the deadline, the election Commission, Lukashenka had submitted 364.000 one and a half million allegedly collected signatures, Babariko around 150,000 of 426.000.

Worrying for Lukashenka

The great number of Belarusians, who have signed up for Babariko and other independent candidates, candidates, have to worry Lukashenka. So other opponents were landed behind bars. As Babariko and his son, Eduard, is the head of his in fact, on Thursday, just more taxes signatures, they were arrested and interrogated, without lawyers, which have not been released due to “Exercises” to them.

Ivan Tertel, the service, the KGB has its origin in said Lukaschenkas secret at the end of the head of the State control Committee, Babariko had been taken as a “direct organizer of unlawful activity” how, in the meantime, around 20 people in the case of Belgasprombank. The “puppeteer” had “large heads of Gazprom and possibly higher”. Babarikos former Bank belongs almost entirely to the Russian gas and Gazprom Bank.

Lukashenka claimed on Friday that it was “us” managed “to thwart a comprehensive Plan for the destabilization of Belarus – this is not a joke and no intimidation and to bring the country to a Maidan to”; a roll-over in Kiev is one of Lukashenka often was a nightmare scenario. The “dolls” were in Belarus, the “puppeteer” in a foreign country, Lukashenka.