Belarus

MINSK/KYIV (Reuters) - Wielding a bunch of flowers and surrounded by clapping supporters, Belarus’s most celebrated writer has lent a powerful voice to the opposition against President Alexander Lukashenko, even if she has so far balked at taking a leadership role.

Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, has mostly kept a low profile and spent years in exile under Lukashenko’s long rule. But she has become more outspoken since turmoil erupted following an Aug. 9 election.

MINSK, August 26. /TASS/: Some 51 people were detained during protests in Belarus on August 25, which were attended by 4,800 citizens, the republic’s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

"The biggest number of protesters were in Minsk, Brest and Molodechno," the ministry said.

Some 16,750 people also took part in the events in support of peace, security and calm in Belarus. The most active events took place in the Brest and Grodno regions as well as in the capital and in the Minsk Region.

MINSK, Aug 26 (NNN-Xinhua) — Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Belarus Petr Miklashevich said the Coordination Council, created on the initiative of ex-presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, is unconstitutional.

The Constitution of the Republic of Belarus does not provide for a possibility to establish public organizations and bodies authorized to revise results of a presidential election, Miklashevich told reporters.

MINSK, August 24. /TASS/: Two members of Belarus’ opposition coordination council, Olga Kovalkova and Sergei Dylevsky, were detained on Monday on charges of organizing an unauthorized rally, as follows from a post on Kovalkova’s Facebook account.

"Riot police accused them of organizing an unauthorized rally and took away in a prison van," the post reads. The two were detained on Monday morning near the Minsk Tractor Plant where they had arrived "to speak with the workers on strike and a deputy director in charge of ideological work."

MINSK, August 22. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has called on the defense ministry’s leadership to take all measures on protecting the country’s territorial integrity, paying a special focus on its western part.

"We must first of all protect the western jewel in the crown of Belarus with the center in Grodno," Lukashenko said during his visit to a military firing range near Grodno, according to BelTA news agency.

The Belarusian leader urged "the toughest measures on protecting the country’s territorial integrity.".

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Authorities in Belarus detained a leader of striking factory workers and threatened demonstrators with criminal charges Friday in a bid to stop the massive post-election protests challenging the country’s authoritarian president, who accused the United States of fomenting the unrest.

MINSK, August 21. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has a shared understanding of the situation in the country with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, as Lukashenko himself said during a visit to the Dzerzhinsky agricultural facility outside the country’s capital of Minsk on Friday.

"I have warned the Russian president of the situation in Belarus. We enjoy mutual understanding, we have a relevant agreement within the SCTO [the Collective Security Treaty Organization] and the Union State," Lukashenko said, as cited by the BelTA news agency.

MINSK (Reuters) - Two leading members of a newly formed opposition council in Belarus were questioned on Friday in a criminal case that accuses the body of trying to seize power from President Alexander Lukashenko after a disputed election.

Dozens of supporters accompanied Maksim Znak and Sarhey Dyleuski as they arrived for questioning at the headquarters of the Investigative Committee.

Znak, a lawyer, said on entering that he feared he might be arrested. But when he emerged later, he said he had “productive discussions”.

MINSK, August 20. /TASS/: Belarus is now undergoing processes similar to the August 1991 coup d'etat attempt, the republic’s Security Council State Secretary Andrei Ravkov wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.

"29 years ago an attempt was carried out to stage a coup d’etat, which entered history as the August coup attempt, and the anti-constitutional steps of the self-proclaimed State Committee on the State of Emergency deepened chaos in the society, bringing the former great power closer to collapse," Ravkov noted. "Such processes are happening in Belarus today."

MINSK, August 20. /TASS/: The strike committee of Belaruskali did not cancel the strike, despite the fact that the company’s management earlier announced the resumption of work of all its divisions, Chairman of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union Maxim Poznyakov told TASS.

"The strike committee extended the strike and adjusted its demands, including the demand to abolish the contract system," the head of the trade union said. He admitted that some of the staff had resumed work though.