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Svetlana Tichanowskaja announces new mass demonstrations from exile
Photo: Sergei Grits / dpa
Exactly half a year after the start of the mass protests in Belarus, the opposition around Svetlana Tichanovskaya announced the "strategy for the victory of the Belarusians".
The plan includes new nationwide protests starting in March.
In order to push through new elections and overthrow head of state Alexander Lukashenko, representatives of the power apparatus and the democracy movement would have to sit down together at a negotiating table in the longer term, it said.
For this, Lukashenko's regime would have to be weakened further - for example through international pressure.
Tichanowskaja currently lives in the EU country Lithuania and is wanted in her home country.
She wants to return with international support.
Her colleague Maria Kalesnikava is still in prison until at least March.
The presidential election on August 9, widely regarded as falsified, sparked mass protests in Belarus.
Lukashenko, often referred to as the “last dictator in Europe”, had himself declared the victor after 26 years in power, while the country's democracy movement sees Tichanovskaya as the winner.
The EU no longer recognizes Lukashenko as president and has already issued sanctions.
At weddings, hundreds of thousands of people took part in the protests, often brutally suppressed.
There were several dead, hundreds injured and tens of thousands arrested.
The actions are now much smaller.
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kim / dpa / AFP