The man known as “Europe’s last dictator” responded with fresh rhetoric and martial imagery on Monday, August 24, as the protest movement against his 26-year reign entered its third week.

As the vast crowd of protesters held their unsanctioned march through Minsk, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko mounted a bizarre display of force.

Footage released by his press service showed him landing at his residence in Minsk with his 15-year-old son Nikolai, both in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles. He then praised riot police manning a heavily fortified barricade as “beautiful guys.”

On Monday the presidency and state news agency Belta used the footage in a montage set to stirring music, titled “Belarus will not waver.” It featured scenes of heavily armed riot police and warnings that Lukashenko will impose “order.”

Maria Kolesnikova, campaign ally of opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, on Monday called for an official investigation into how Nikolai, a minor, was allowed to carry a combat weapon, and ridiculed Lukashenko.

“We think it’s very strange when someone who heads a country allows himself to run about in very strange clothing, with a very strange weapon in the center of Minsk,” she said.

“If he thinks 80% of Belarusians voted for him, why does he fearfully hide behind barbed wire and those chains of ‘beautiful guys’?”

Stepping up arrests

This comes as Belarusian authorities stepped up arrests of political opponents and strike leaders on Monday, after Sunday, August 23, saw the latest unprecedented demonstration against Lukashenko’s disputed reelection.

Most prominently, Nobel Literature Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich was summoned for questioning over her ties to the opposition.

Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize in 2015, has supported Tikhanovskaya and is a member of the Coordination Council set up by her allies to oversee a peaceful transition of power, although the 72-year-old writer has not attended its sessions.

The Investigative Committee summoned Alexievich for questioning on Wednesday as a witness in an ongoing criminal probe into the council’s creation, focusing on alleged calls to seize power.

Another presidium member, former arts minister and diplomat Pavel Latushko, faces questioning on Tuesday, August 26.

The announcement came hours after police reported the detention of two other Coordination Council members on suspicion of organizing illegal strikes.

Meanwhile a top US diplomat met Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania after tens of thousands took part in some of the largest protests in the country’s recent history for a second Sunday in a row.

Tikhanovskaya fled to neighboring Lithuania after August 9 polls that she claims to have won against Lukashenko. His insistence on his own landslide victory and police violence against demonstrators have sparked the huge protests against his rule. – with reports from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com