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by keraf 2144 days ago
I used to work for a Belarusian company (outside of Belarus). From what my ex-colleagues told me, they have very little contact with the people in Minsk. There's the occasional email or connected people on MS Teams. Not sure if that's caused by people protesting or internet shutdown/filtering for offices as well.

I also asked some Belarusian friends how they keep getting information from there. They said they have intermittent access to Telegram but it works better by using proxies. Some of the news channels on Telegram are managed by people outside the country who receive the information via text message. Not sure what type of block was in place (cellular data?).

Edit: Another Belarusian friend said he's able to communicate again with people back home after 3 days of quasi constant blackout.
1 comments
brabel 2144 days ago
I have contacts in Belarus. They were completely offline for 3 days since Sunday. Only today (12-Aug-2020 08:00 UTC approx) it seems the situation got back to normal and I've heard from them.

People are just terrified now and all they want is peace. They know that continuing protests is likely to result in a bloodbath and are understandably afraid of that.

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thewinnie 2144 days ago
I would disagree with your last statement.

I have a lot of friends from Belarus, and at least from IT sector, they are really eager to continue protests simply cause they are scarred what can happen if current government will stay

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brabel 2144 days ago
At this point, it's very difficult to know if the people who want protests to stop (even if they hate their government) are more numerous than the people who want the protests to continue and grow until the government can be replaced (with, from what I know in Belarus, is extremely unlikely - given that there's zero opposition prepared to take over the Government). But at least for now, things seem to be calming down instead of escalating.
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petre 2144 days ago
Russia will take over or get involved. Do not kid yourself that they won't. Belarus has a direct border to Russia. They'll probably use protests to install a pro Kremlin government just like they did in Ukraine before Euromaidan sent him fleeing to Russia.
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jitteriest 2144 days ago
They are effectively one country already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State

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