Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka said he was prepared to shut down internet access if mass protests occurred during or after the country’s next presidential election. At an address before the student body of Minsk State Linguistic University, he also acknowledged approving connectivity disruptions during the unrest that followed the 2020 vote.
The next election was scheduled for January 26. According to the state news agency BelTA, Lukashenka framed a potential shutdown as a measure to protect the country and prevent messaging when national stability was at stake. His remarks indicated that authorities viewed communications infrastructure as a tool they could restrict in response to political mobilization.
The warning drew significance from Belarus’s previous election. After voting on August 9, 2020, opposition groups said the result had been rigged. Internet connections across the country were disrupted for several days and continued to face intermittent blocks. Lukashenka said on November 22, 2024 that those restrictions had occurred with his approval.
Many Western governments did not regard the 2020 election as free or fair. The United States, European Union and other international actors condemned the result as fraudulent. Lukashenka, who had held power since 1994, secured another term under the disputed outcome.
Large demonstrations then called for him to leave office. Authorities answered with mass detentions and violent suppression. The supplied report said several people died and that protesters alleged torture. Opposition leaders subsequently remained either imprisoned or outside the country, while Lukashenka rejected dialogue with his critics.
Against that record, the new threat was not an abstract reference to a technical capability. It connected the approaching vote to a form of control already used during an earlier electoral crisis. A complete shutdown could limit both personal communications and public reporting, although the evidence did not detail how authorities would implement such a measure or which networks and services it would cover.
The lack of technical detail also prevented assessment of duration, geographic reach or potential exceptions for essential services. Such questions depended on an order that had not been issued.
The statement also did not establish that protests or an outage would occur. It was a conditional warning issued roughly two months before the scheduled ballot.
The verified development on November 22 was therefore Lukashenka’s public position: he defended the 2020 disruptions, accepted responsibility for approving them and reserved the option of a broader cutoff if demonstrations returned. The historical record supplied with the remarks showed why the warning mattered, while leaving the actual conduct of the January election and any future network measures unresolved.
