Editor’s Note:

When elites cling to power by murdering their children, the handwriting is on the wall for the regime. The crowd of Belarusian exiles gathered in Kyiv last night were of the same generation as the man they mourned – Vitaliy Shyshov, aged 26. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, the Olympic sprinter who found refuge in Poland yesterday, is 24. Roman Protasevich, the opposition journalist dragged off the intercepted Ryanair flight, is 26. At the end of this month, self-proclaimed ‘president’ Alexander Lukashenko turns 67. Presumably, in the not so distant future, President Putin will put the Lukashenko fossil on wheels and roll him off the political stage. Time will tell if Belarusians will meekly accept a 45-year-old Lukashenko clone. With Best Regards Jim Brooke