These are desperate times for Russian leader Vladimir Putin
His regime stands accused of poisoning his main political rival in Russia...
...Alexei Navalny, with the deadly nerve-agent, Novichok
The poisoning suggests kind of a measure of desperation...
...that the regime in Russia has run out of arguments...
...and now has to resort to sheer violence
But events in neighbouring Belarus...
...show violence alone isn’t always enough to maintain control
Protesters there have braved state-sponsored terror…
...to demand that dictator Alexander Lukashenko steps down
And the Kremlin is watching...
...as thousands of miles away in far-eastern Russia...
...protesters have also been on the street for weeks
They say they stand with Belarus
So should Putin be worried?
Putin’s legitimacy is waning...
...and this is extraordinary events to watch
We’re seeing history in the making here
On August 9th, Alexander Lukashenko...
...the longest-serving autocrat in Europe...
...declared a landslide election victory in Belarus
He came to power in 1994...
...and since then not one of his elections has been free or fair
But this time, the people refused to accept the rigged result
It sparked the largest popular protest in Belarus’s history
One of the leaders of the opposition, Maria Kolesnikova...
...was on the streets in the capital, Minsk
He has no safety. In order for him to feel safe, he needs to wear a bulletproof vest...
...take an assault rifle and roll around town like it’s some footage from a bad Hollywood movie
It is absolutely clear that he is the person who is afraid
But Lukashenko’s use of violence has intensified
Ten days after we interviewed Maria Kolesnikova...
...she was abducted by Mr Lukashenko’s plain-clothed security goons
She’s now in prison
Only two months ago, nothing suggested this was coming
Lukashenko has rigged elections for years
He had everything under control
It’s like with metal, metal develops a fatigue...
...but you don’t know when it’s going to break
The speed and scale of the revolt has rattled Putin
While neighbouring Russia and Belarus are different in many ways...
...their two leaders have some similarities
Both Putin and Lukashenko pledged to restore stability...
...after the Soviet collapse...
...and both changed the constitution...
...so they can effectively stay in power for ever
And both rely on the threat...
...or use of violence to maintain control
Belarus is important because it is a template...
...in a way, for what’s been happening in Russia and what might come in Russia
If even somebody like Lukashenko can be so brittle...
...and changes can be so unexpected...
...then that changes your calculation about how long...
...Putin can actually stay in power himself
Discontent has been building up for years in Belarus
The state-run economy had stalled...
...and Lukashenko’s promises to restore Soviet-style order and pride...
...were increasingly meaningless to the new generation
Then covid-19 struck
Lukashenko refused to impose lockdowns...
...and even said the virus did not exist
This mobilised civil society to step in where their leader had failed
People started crowdfunding, buying protective equipment for doctors...
...delivering that protective equipment, informing people about what’s happening
They took over the function of the state
The energy of civic activism then flowed and morphed into political activism
This popular revolution has become a national awakening, after years of Soviet-style rule
It was led by three women, headed by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya
She only stood because her husband...
...a political vlogger who wanted to run for the presidency, had been jailed
Are you confident that the uprising will win?
I believe in my people, in people of Belarus
As the protests spread, she was threatened and fled to Lithuania
Maria Kolesnikova was the last member of the original opposition left in Belarus...
...until she disappeared
What we have managed to do in three months is already an incredible achievement
While protest raged in Belarus, thousands of miles away in Khabarovsk...
...a city in Russia’s far east...
...another popular movement has been gaining ground
Demonstrators have been on the streets since July…
...protesting against the arrest of a popular local governor, who was elected against the Kremlin’s wishes
When the revolution in Belarus had started...
...suddenly the slogans in Khabarovsk are “Long live Belarus”
It is that connection that should be a moment of worry for the Kremlin
With anti-government protests in both Russia’s far east and Minsk, the Putin regime took decisive action
On August 20th, opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the nerve-agent Novichok...
...which was allegedly found on a water bottle in his hotel room
This has provoked international condemnation
The mystery about what made a Russian opposition leader critically ill has been solved
He says he has unequivocal proof that Russian opposition leader...
...Alexei Navalny was poisoned
Novichok, the highly potent Soviet nerve agent was used against him
While Navalny himself is banned from standing for office...
...he had been encouraging his supporters to vote tactically in forthcoming local elections
And while he had been imprisoned and attacked many times before…
...there had never been a direct attempt on his life like this
Having a leader who will be seen as legitimate by protesters...
...and possibly by parts of the elite, is now too risky
And so this is the step that Putin’s regime has taken to take him out of the picture...
...and then something went wrong
When Mr Navalny was taken ill on a flight over Siberia, the pilot made an emergency landing
Paramedics were then able to reach him, identify he had been poisoned, and administer an antidote
By the time he reached hospital, security services and state media tried to take control of the story...
...and claimed he might simply have fainted due to hunger
But it was too late. His life had been saved...
...and the truth was out
The human response to this situation could not have been predicted or planned...
...because contrary to what Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko think...
...humans do have their own free will
This shows you actually Putin doesn’t control everything
Mr Navalny’s candidates won symbolic victories in the local elections
He is now recovering in Germany
And while the actions of a pilot or paramedic in Siberia...
...may seem far removed from the rallying cry of protesters in Belarus...
...the actions of both show that Putin and Lukashenko are not all-powerful
When people have individual will as they do...
...the regimes don't know how to deal with it
They only stay in power for as long as they maintain legitimacy
Once they've lost that, things start happening...
...and this is what we’re seeing now
This is why this is a really historic moment
Putin cannot be beaten through the ballot box...
...and his main opposition is out of the picture, for now at least
But if Lukashenko falls...
...it will send a signal to people in Russia that dictatorial rulers can be beaten
From the outside, it may seem like what is happening now, will not lead to any changes...
...in fact every Belarusian understands perfectly well that we are at the exact point now
Where the work is just starting
Putin has now promised Lukashenko $1.5bn to help prop up the regime
And while it is impossible to predict exactly when or how Lukashenko will fall…
...the European Parliament says his presidency should not be recognised from November
This summer’s events have shown Putin is unsettled and scared
Which makes what happens next increasingly unpredictable and dangerous
I’m Arkady Ostrovsky and I’m the Russia editor at The Economist
If you’d like to know more about events in Belarus...
...or the poisoning Alexei Navalny or the protests in Khabarovsk...
...you can click on the link opposite