Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. Imagine you're a decision maker with nearly no time at all to get your head around a big subject. So I invite you into a virtual chamber where the top experts take you through what you need to know in fewer minutes than it takes to do a yoga class.

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This week, what's going to happen in Belarus?

Music in Belarus. That's the sound that's the sound from Belarus, the landlocked country that sits between Russia and Europe.

The re-election last week of the man called Europe's last dictator Alexander Lukashenko

has proved one rigged ballot too many.

The protests have been met by extreme police violence, but haven't abated.

A new fair poll has been demanded and rejected.

That was President Lukashenko, telling protesters that they would have to kill him before there was another election.

Well, is that the only option for Biela Rus?

Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out.

First, who is Alexander Lukashenko? Joining me is David Marple's professor of history at the University of Alberta

in Canada and an authority on Lukashenko's regime in Belarus. Well, he was a manager of a state

farm and in 1990 he was elected to the parliament which was then known as the Supreme Soviet.

And in that parliament,

he became an interim head of an anti-corruption committee. And he was virtually unknown at that time. Very few people knew him. And yet he went about this task on the anti-corruption committee with

great gusto. So that's how he first made

his dame. And in 1994, Lukashenko decided to run in the first presidential elections in the

...