Six years ago, on 12 September 2020, Minsk’s women’s march ended at Victory Square. Here, at the stele on Independence Avenue, the columns converged — Tut.by already counted about ten thousand people. Security vans rode alongside almost the entire way. Before that, OMON and men in balaclavas beat and grabbed people at Freedom Square and downtown; at Victory Square the regime used another tool — control the finish with mass and fear. Among the participants was Nina Bahinskaya. Dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka already proved that even at a symbol of wartime memory a “women’s” Saturday was not sacred.
Victory Square — the heart of that day
For the chronicle of 12 September the key point is not only the start by the town hall, but Victory Square. That is where the women’s march brought its main stream. On Independence Avenue several columns merged; Tut.by estimated about 10,000 people. The route reached the stele: most participants dispersed here, Tut.by and Meduza wrote.
Per TASS, the scene at Victory Square was this: the column passed the square almost to the Academy of Sciences, then returned again to Victory Square — and from there began to disperse, shouting slogans and promising to come back. By the end of the action about two thousand women remained in a dense group by the stele while others spread through the centre. White-red-white flags, portraits of Maria Kalesnikava, the bang of pots and pans — against a monument the regime liked to call “its own.”
The vans never took their eyes off the square. Security minibuses escorted the march almost all the way to Victory Square and stayed close as the column looped Independence Avenue. It did not always look like an instant assault on the whole ten-thousand-strong crowd at the stele — after the morning dispersal at Freedom Square the regime chose another instrument: escort, pressure, the constant threat of another swoop. Anyone who had already seen grabs by the town hall understood, at Victory Square, the price of a step toward a van’s side.
That day Victory Square was both the finish and a show of scale. Those who reached it had not been broken by detentions downtown. Here the women’s march showed the city and the world: even after the vans, the column re-forms — and walks out to the capital’s main symbol. For Lukashenka that was a blow to the stage set of “order”: stele, avenue, memory — and ten thousand women chanting “Go away!”
How many were detained that day
The Viasna Human Rights Centre reported at least 69 / about 70 detained; earlier updates said “more than 40,” then lists grew — Novy Chas cited more than 60 women and girls on the published list. The official Interior Ministry the next day claimed 114 detained nationwide and 99 in Minsk — for all that day’s actions, not only the women’s column; 87 were placed in detention pending court.
For the chronicle: independent counts for the women’s march put detentions at around seventy; the regime’s version — nearly a hundred in the capital that Saturday. Authorities undercounted the crowd (the ministry spoke of “no more than 1,700” nationwide) while advertising arrest numbers.
How the column walked to Victory Square
The path to the stele began with a blow. The main wave of hard detentions hit Freedom Square by the town hall: up to a thousand at the start, OMON and men in balaclavas without insignia, about 40 into vans in the first hour (Reuters witnesses). Women blocked minibuses, tore off masks, linked arms. Nina Bahinskaya tried to stop a van — officers pushed her aside. Covered by Meduza, BBC, RFE/RL.
Pushed off Freedom Square, the columns left along the Svislach — through Nemiga and the Troitskoe suburb onto Pobediteley Avenue, straight toward Victory Square. On Nemiga, Belsat journalists Katsiaryna Andreyeva and Max Kalitovsky were seized (DW). Near Bahdanovicha several more were detained (RIA). That whole route prepared the day’s main frame: merger on Independence Avenue and the walk-out to the stele.
August–September 2020 context
Protests began on 9 August 2020 — after a falsified “election” in which Lukashenka claimed victory. That night and the nights that followed, rubber bullets, tear gas, stun grenades and water cannons were used. Security forces beat and tortured detainees; people were killed. Saturday women’s marches answered that violence — white clothes, flowers, no illusions: the regime beat women too.
Six years later
Repression did not end when the columns left the stele. Thousands of political prisoners, “extremist” lists, pressure on families — all from the same machine that on 12 September 2020 drove vans along Victory Square. Remembering the women’s march means remembering the frame at the monument: ten thousand women, a security escort and the chant “Go away!” on a square the dictator treated as his showcase.