MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th February, 2021) Opposition figure and ex-candidate to the Belarusian presidency Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said on Sunday that she would expect President Alexander Lukashenko to step down in the upcoming few months.
"The Lukashenko regime will fall this year. I think he'll be gone in the spring," Tikhanovskaya told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
When asked about how exactly she anticipates Lukashenko's ouster to proceed, Tikhanovskaya said she counted on the internal pressure as well as the support of the West, including the European Union and the United States.
The politician also stressed that she believed in peaceful protests rather than an "aggressive revolution," and expressed gratitude to the EU for its solidarity with the Belarusian opposition. However, she went on, due to a "huge bureaucracy" within the bloc the processes she is aspiring to are moving slowly.
"We would like more toughness and more sanctions - also, a little faster," Tikhanovskaya said.
Belarus has been drawing international condemnation for the violent suppression of mass anti-government protests since last summer, when President Alexander Lukashenko took the office for the sixth time in a row, gathering over 80 percent of the vote, an official result the opposition rejected, claiming electoral fraud.�
Tikhanovskaya, whom the opposition believes to be the true winner of the election, fled to Lithuania shortly after the riots began, and has been seeking the support of Western leaders ever since.
