"The System Is Over, and the Regime Has No Chance of Holding on"

Any unexpected trigger can lead to victory over the dictatorship.

Residents of Belarus are still convinced that the regime is doomed and count on a new round of struggle, journalist Raman Papkou writes in an article for MBH Media.

Minsk is a city with an amazing destiny. Over the past year, he has gone through three eras, appeared before his guests in three images.

At the end of 2019, the Belarusian capital lived in a unique world of Soviet retro. Slow, sleepy city, with a minimal number of police on the streets and an almost complete absence of nightclub and bar life. Huge deserted areas. Brezhnev's USSR - only with the Internet and McDonald's.

Then, in the summer of 2020, after two nights of street fighting with AMAP, Minsk seemed to have won the right to a full life. Beautiful Minsk women staged processions with white flowers and ribbons on Independence Avenue. In the evenings, young people turned Independence Square into an art space. Sitting on granite slabs in front of the Cabinet of Ministers' monumental building, boys and girls drew slogans against violence and dictatorship on giant Whatman paper. The right to freedom of assembly by people was fully realized and turned into a direct action law.

And so, after a difficult three-month autumn confrontation, Minsk turned into an "occupied city."

One of the Belarusian activists, a former cellmate of Raman Papkou in the detention center at Akrestsina Street, commented on the situation in Minsk and Belarus:

"Paradoxically, all the people I meet have complete confidence that the system is over. The Belarusians have such doomed confidence that the regime has no chance to stay," he says.

According to him, the Belarusians reflected on recent months' events and came to an understanding: there will be the next round.

And this round will lead to victory:

"Some unexpected trigger can work together with the correct actions of the opposition in the international arena and the internal subversive activities that the former security officials are engaged in," said Raman Papkou's interlocutor.