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Lukashenko vows to prevent 'maidan-like' revolutions in Belarus

The Belarusian president gave instructions to the interior minister to restore 'ideal order' in the country

MINSK, March 9. /TASS/. The citizens of Belarus will have an opportunity to express their views in designated areas but the country’s authorities will not allow anybody to destabilize the situation like it happened in Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday at a meeting dedicated to the pressing issues of the country’s development.

"There will be no ‘maidan’ in Belarus," Lukashenko stated.

The Belarusian president gave instructions to Interior Minister Igor Shunevich to restore "ideal order" in the country. "You can’t ban anyone from walking around the city’s squares. But this work has been a failure in Minsk as well as in the regional centers so you need to join in. Take one square and make it a place where people may come to express their views," Lukashenko elaborated. "However, the working people should not have to face any obstacles in their everyday life," he warned.

According to Lukashenko, "some of our citizens, who are obsessed with the Maidan ideas, have gone to Kiev to search for their fellow believers, who could organize maidan-like protests." "These people (the Belarusian protesters) will be background artists or cannon fodder, while there are going to be 300 to 400 instigators headed by the villains who will have returned from Kiev," the Belarusian leader added. "They will find ten to twenty professionals who opened fire in Kiev, and after blood is shed a true disaster will begin," Lukashenko added.

In this connection he ordered the law enforcement agencies to prevent such activities. "If those whose previous crimes have been pardoned and who have been released from prison fail to learn their lesson, then they should be sent back to jail," the Belarusian president added. "We need to maintain dialogue with the people but all offences should be punished harshly," he said demanding that the law enforcement agencies prevent all attempts to destabilize the situation.

"We need to pick out instigators like raisins from a muffin so that they could be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," the Belarusian president stressed.