We have witnessed endless protests in Belarus following he fraudulent elections on 9 August 2020. A wide variety of civil servants (including ambassadors), police officers and military resigned and journalists from the state media quit their work in support of the protestors. Yet, as the time pass by, it is only the ordinary citizens of Belarus that still resist, demonstrating not only in Minsk but also all over the country and cumulating as much as 200,000 people despite the police brutality and arrests. 

The crisis has reached an absolute stalemate at the moment. First of all, Alyaksandr Lukashenka resisted to step down despite the continuing protests and international pressure. He opted to change swiftly higher echelons of the state architecture with pro-Russian bureaucrats in order to get the backing of Moscow. Second, Putin seems hesitant and unwilling, because of not only Lukashenka’s distancing Belarus from Russia in recent years, but also the very delicate nature of the situation.