‘A friend is in trouble’: Lukashenko gets $1.5B loan from Putin

Belarusian opposition leader tells Russian president ‘I regret that you have decided on dialogue with a dictator.’

Russia is to loan $1.5 billion to Belarus to help avoid an economic crisis, President Vladimir Putin said Monday as he met with embattled leader Alexander Lukashenko.

The two men met in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi for their first face-to-face meeting since Belarus erupted in protest following a disputed election on August 9.

“A friend is in trouble, and I say that sincerely,” Lukashenko told Putin in televised remarks at the start of the meeting, the Guardian reported.

“There is a red line, you also know about this, more than I do, you had to make these lines clear in Chechnya when you were a young president,” Lukashenko said to Putin in reference to the Second Chechen War of 1999-2000, adding that he did not believe people in Belarus had crossed the red line yet.

On Sunday, at least 100,000 people marched through the Belarusian capital Minsk and other cities to demand that Lukashenko resign. It was the fifth mass demonstration on a Sunday since the election.

Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who is now living in Lithuania, said on her Telegram channel: "I want to remind Vladimir Putin, whatever you agree on in Sochi will not have legal force. Any agreements signed with illegitimate Lukashenko will be revisited by a new government because the Belarusian people no longer trust Lukashenko and did not support him in the elections. I regret that you have decided on dialogue with a dictator and not with the people of Belarus."