From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CEO podcast.

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Hello, I'm Ian Bond.

I'm the Director of Foreign Policy at the Centre for European Reform.

Welcome to the latest CER podcast. I'm joined today by Charles Grant, the director of the

CER, to discuss the situation in Belarus. We had hoped to be joined by Charles's wife, Katya Glod, who's in Minsk at the moment,

but unfortunately because the Belarusian regime has taken down the internet, we have not been

able to connect with her, although Charles has been able to exchange text messages with her,

so hopefully has some up-to-date information about the situation

on the ground. Let me also say that we're recording this on the morning of Tuesday, the 11th of

August. So by the time you listen to it, a lot may have happened on the ground in Belarus,

and we may know more about the evolving situation there.

I mean, first of all, let me start by sketching in some of the background and then I'll

ask Charles about the latest developments.

Alexander Lukashenko has been the president of Belarus since 1994 and that was really the last

time that Belarus had a freeish and fairish election.

Since then, all the elections have been rigged to a greater or lesser extent, and Lukashenko

has consolidated his power very effectively over the last 26 years. He's often described as

...