Opposition Unites, Selects a Candidate
Belarus’ fragmented political opposition chose a U.S.-educated physicist to challenge President Alexander G. Lukashenko in next year’s presidential election.
Inspired by the ouster of unpopular governments in nearby Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the last two years, about 800 representatives of Belarus’ opposition parties named Alexander Milinkevich as their candidate during a congress in the capital, Minsk.
Milinkevich, 58, went to college in California and attended the German-U.S. George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. He served in a local administration in his native city of Grodno near the Polish border in the early 1990s.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
