“Past the expiry date, 1994-2020″ reads this placard at a protest in Minsk, August 2020. Lukashenka became President of Belarus in 1994. Photo CC BY-NC 2.0: Natallia Rak / Flickr. Some rights reserved. This year, Belarusians have paid a heavy price for resisting Alyaksandr Lukashenka. His attempt to claim a sixth consecutive presidential term in the August 9 election prompted the largest wave of protests in the country's post-Soviet history. When hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators took to the streets of major cities, the authorities unleashed violence on a similarly historic scale. Security services and police have detained thousands of protesters, at least four of whom have been killed. Protesters have made credible accusations of torture and ill-treatment in police detention, none of which have been investigated by the authorities. Lukashenka, who has ruled since 1994, made a show of defiance by blaming foreign powers and domestic conspiracies. In late August he was filmed leaving a helicopter near the presidential palace in Minsk, brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle without its magazine. This stunt may have been widely mocked, but it was meant in earnest. Violence (the threat and its application) appears to have paid off. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who became the leader of this opposition movement, is fêted in European capitals, where she continues to demand nothing less than Lukashenka's resignation and a re-run of the election which she is widely believed to have won. She continues to inspire protesters in Belarus, though there is a rising sense that their protest has become an end in itself, without a longer strategy in the face of such intransigence. Lukashenka may have become a pariah, but he remains a pariah in office. And as winter descends, he has regained the initiative. It is far from certain that he can keep it. Opposition figures, many of them members of the Coordinating Council, are either in jail or exiled. A leaderless protest may have tactical advantages in evading repression, but offers little in the way of long term strategy. Labour unrest, a genuinely cross-class form of civil disobedience which spread to several large state-owned concerns, has decreased. Moreover this month, the country's borders were completely sealed — ostensibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the economic impact of political emigration may be another rationale. If there are cracks in the regime, they are not yet wide enough to cause collapse. While some members of the security services have indeed resigned, there are as yet no high-level elite defections. As the Polish analyst Kamil Kłysiński writes, Lukashenka is now promoting members of the security services to civilian administrative roles. In October Ivan Kubrakov, police chief in the capital of Minsk who presided over crackdowns on large demonstrations, was appointed interior minister. These figures have even less to gain from siding with an opposition which demands their lustration. As the Russian political scientist Andrey Okara told the Ukrainian website Telegraf.UA, the Belarusian political elite is now in the same boat as Lukashenka, and it's time to sink or swim: Что-то точно случится с Лукашенко. Он явно вышел на финишную прямую. Вопрос лишь в том – когда именно и что случится. Ключевые люди которые эти три месяца калечили других (или не мешали этому) уже в какой-то мере связаны с Лукашенко кровью. Причем это в данном случае – не фигура речи. Кровью они повязаны в прямом смысле слова. Something will certainly happen to Lukashenka. He's on the home stretch. The only question is how and when things will come to pass. Key figures who have maimed others for the past three months (or at least haven't prevented it) are already bonded to Lukashenka with blood. In this case, that isn't a figure of speech. Bonded with blood, in the most literal sense. For now, domestic factors do not compel Lukashenka to give in or give up. But his previous appeals to reform, once unburdened by details, are now being fleshed out. A new constitution was one of several topics Lukashenka discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi in September. In November, Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Russia's hopes for this reform; Lukashenka then hinted that he may even step down as president if a new constitution was agreed. Few in the Belarusian opposition, which dismisses these reforms as window dressing, would take Lukashenka at his word. They are convinced that there is a catch. Recent experience proves them right. In recent years, several ailing autocratic leaders across the post-Soviet space have tinkered with constitutional arrangements to ensure their hold on power.