The Belarus People’s Assembly in Minsk on February 11-12 was a retro neo-Soviet affair. With the pomp and circumstance of a 1970s-vintage Communist Party Congress, strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka assailed six months of protests against his autocratic regime as a Western-controlled “rebellion” to a room of nearly 3,000 handpicked loyalists under a banner reading Unity! Development! Independence!

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