As a government-sponsored crackdown escalates against opponents of Belarus’s strongman President Alexander Lukashenko days after his much-disputed re-election, President Trump is soon expected to make a strong statement on the situation.
At White House Counselor KellyAnne Conway’s briefing for reporters outside the Oval Office Tuesday morning, Newsmax asked if the president is monitoring the violence in Minsk — capital city of Belarus — and whether he would issue a statement about it.
“Yes, he is,” Conway told us, “And you should ask him about it at his news conference.”
She then went on to recount her own travels to Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism in the early 1990’s and her commitment to establishing democracy in the former Soviet empire.
Since Sunday, when 26-year tenured President Lukashenko was declared the winner of a bid for re-election with 80 percent of the vote, his leading opponent and reform candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya fled to neighboring Lithuana.
In addition, two young activists from the group Open Russia headed by anti-Putin dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky came to Minsk as election observers. Both of them, Artem Vazhenkov and Iliya Rogov, were arrested.
“We lost them until this morning when the Belorussian TV showed the propaganda video featuring a few arrested people in Minsk as provocative from abroad,” Open Russia spokeswoman Maria Logan told us, “Two of our young guys speak on the video. They have clearly been beaten.”
So far, the U.S. State Department told us it is “monitoring the situation. “ In a carefully-worded statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also weighed in on the gathering storm in Minsk.
“We urge the Belarusian government to respect the rights of all Belarusians to participate in peaceful assembly, refrain from use of force, and release those wrongfully detained,” he told reporters, “We strongly condemn ongoing violence against protesters and the detention of opposition support.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.