Photo: Belarusian Interior Ministry

The Belarusian Interior Ministry has held a new round of anti-riot drills designed to “ensure public order” ahead of January’s presidential election, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The drills, which are being held from Tuesday to Friday, aim to train the country’s police to operate in “special circumstances”, namely “public order offences” during the upcoming election, the ministry said.

The ministry also published a video showing riot police officers suppressing a makeshift “crowd” of protesters with water cannons and shields.

While the drills were “based on worst case scenarios”, the situation in Belarus was “calm” and “under the control” of the security forces, Interior Minister Ivan Kubrakou told Belarusian state news agency BELTA on Tuesday.

Kubrakou added that the ministry had “conducted analysis” and “drawn conclusions” based on the events in 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets to contest the results of the presidential election.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s challenger in that election who was subsequently forced into exile, told AP on Tuesday that the anti-riot drills heralded “preparation for a crackdown on dissent before the fictitious election”.

“Drills to suppress citizens aren’t a sign of force, they are a sign of fear,” Tsikhanouskaya added.

The upcoming presidential election, planned for 26 January, is widely expected to be a sham, following Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on dissent following the 2020 election, in which nearly 1,300 people were imprisoned for their role in anti-government protests and all major opposition parties were banned.