Belarus across the barricades - part one

Lucy Ash explores the world of the security forces that keep Lukashenko in power, peeling back the ubiquitous balaclavas to find the men and women beneath.

Minsk, early December. A wall of masked men in black body armour, beating their truncheons on steel shields. In front of them stand women bundled in winter coats and teenagers wrapped in red and white flags. They are singing a protest song once heard in the revolutionary shipyards of Gdansk a generation before - an anthem for democracy and change. For more than one hundred days these versions of Belarus have advanced and retreated - and now they seem locked in impasse.

Despite sanctions, despite disapproval so loud that even foreign diplomats are demonstrating - the government of Alexander Lukashenko stands firm. Despite violence and intimidation, arrest and the prohibition on all independent reporting, the demonstrators keep coming, day after day, night after night.

Producer: Monica Whitlock

(Photo: Belarusian law enforcement officers block opposition supporters during their rally to reject the presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Credit: Reuters)