(CN) — In the third week of mass protests after a disputed presidential election, Belarus, a holdover from Eastern Europe's communist past, is witnessing stirring scenes of a nation seeming to wake up from a long hibernation.
Over the weekend, about 150,000 demonstrators gathered in central Minsk, the capital, in numbers not seen since the end of communism. This sea of people – children, women, the elderly, young, blue-collar workers and professionals – waved the old red and white national flag of Belarus, an outlawed symbol of the opposition.
Elsewhere, a guitar player stood alone in front of a phalanx of riot police and sang protest songs. Protesters line-danced under the glare of a statue of Lenin in Minsk's Independence Square. A red and white protest flag flapped atop the smokestacks of a state-run ammonia factory. Teachers and scientists marched against the government. An airplane flew over the capital flying a giant red and white flag.
But the ripple effects of this political awakening against a dictatorial regime in a sleepy nation the size of Kansas has the potential to cause far greater consequences: The protests may encourage people in neighboring Russia to follow their example.
The long-running reign of Russian President Vladimir Putin is faced with its own growing popular unrest and nationwide protests may erupt after Russia's upcoming regional elections on Sept. 13, political observers say.
Putin and his United Russia party are threatened with weakening support because of declining economic fortunes, falling living standards and mounting frustration over poor governance. Long-running protests have broken out in Russia's Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk and may spread elsewhere.
Many in the West are accusing the Kremlin of seeking to quell this unrest with the recent alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition politician. The Kremlin rejects the allegations.
“Rising civic activism and leaderless protests in Russia’s regions are becoming a new headache for the Kremlin,” said Andrius Tursa, an Eastern Europe expert at Teneo, a political risk firm based in London, in a briefing note Wednesday.
The birth of nationwide protests in Russia, he said, “would be particularly worrying for the Kremlin amid Putin’s declining authority and ongoing leaderless demonstrations against the authoritarian regime in neighboring Belarus.”
Faced with spreading unrest, Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenk – the former head of a Soviet state farm and communist apparatchik who's dominated his nation of 9.7 million people on the borderland between the European Union and Russia for 26 years – appear ready to do everything they can to make sure the protests in Belarus do not upend their hold on power.
Putin has congratulated Lukashenko on his victory and Russia has warned the EU and the United States to not interfere in Belarus. In Western Europe, analysts and political leaders are girding themselves for what Putin will do to make sure Belarus does not fall into the hands of a pro-Western and pro-European movement, such as happened in Ukraine in 2014. Faced with the loss of Ukraine as an ally, Russia invaded Crimea. Experts believe Russia will do what it can to make sure Belarus does not take that path.
“Vladimir Putin is holding on to power by means not dissimilar to those of Alexander Lukashenko,” said Wolfgang Munchau, a political analyst who runs Eurointelligence, in a briefing note.
He said the protests in Belarus are about the way the country is governed and that if it becomes necessary Putin may view a military option in Belarus “as his least risky.”
If Russia used force in Belarus, he said the EU would be forced into making tough decisions but that it would likely find itself with limited power and few good options. For example, it would likely be unwilling to ban Russian imports of gas because they are critically important to Germany, Europe's strongest economy and its dominant political player, he said.