Lukashenko talks about shutting down the Internet in Belarus in case of protests

Self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has threatened that in case of new mass protests in the country, similar to the events after the 2020 presidential election, he will order a complete shutdown of the Internet. Lukashenko previously claimed that the outages at the time were caused by alleged interference from abroad.

However, he has now admitted that the Internet shutdown after the elections in the country was carried out by his own decision. Lukashenko said this on Friday, November 22, during a meeting with students of several educational institutions at the Minsk State Linguistic University, the Belarusian propaganda outlet BelTA reports.

"If this happens again, we will turn it off altogether. Do you think I will watch and pray that you haven't written to someone if the country is gone tomorrow," Lukashenko said.

According to him, the Internet shutdown in 2020 was due to the fact that the issue of "the country's fate" was being decided then.

"I'm weighing it up and thinking: to save the country, we'll turn off the Internet for two hours or an hour so that the special services can't control our society from there. That's why it was done. I chose the best of the worst," Lukashenko said.

"To be honest, it was almost always my decision. If you have two problems, you start weighing them," Lukashenko added.

After the disputed 2020 presidential election, which extended the long-running rule of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus was gripped by massive street protests, with participants demanding Lukashenko's resignation. The protests were accompanied by large-scale arrests, reports of torture, and violent crackdowns that left several people dead. Immediately after the election, Internet access in the country was almost completely blocked for three days.

As a reminder, Belarus has set the date for the next presidential election. According to the decision of the House of Representatives, they will be held on January 26, 2025. Meanwhile, Russia has already promised to send Russian security forces to the country in case of protests against the falsification of the will of Belarusian citizens.

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