Belarus: why are people protesting and could it bring down a president? - podcast

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Belarus to contest the claimed election victory of the president, Alexander Lukashenko, and met a violent police response. Hanna Liubakova, a Belarusian journalist, describes being on the ground, while the Guardian's Andrew Roth looks at how Lukashenko has remained in power for 26 years

This episode first aired on Today in Focus, the Guardian's global daily news podcast.

On 9 August, presidential election day, clashes broke out across Belarus as riot police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, teargas and water cannon to quash protests. Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled for 26 years, claimed he had won a landslide victory in an election marred by accusations of vote-rigging. The election commission announced the next day that he had taken 80.23% of the votes while his main opposition challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has held some of the country's largest political rallies since the days of the Soviet Union, had only 9.9%.