Alexander Lukashenko mentioned the Metro workers' strike during the opening of the new stations Aeradromnaya, Nemarshanski Sad and Slutski Hastsinets in Minsk at the end of 2024. His speech on January 5, 2025, was published by BelTA.
"Well, we had quite a turmoil. Without the police, it would have been hard to handle. Protesters were overturning cars and such. The opposition back then was very active in using the Metro workers. I remember they convinced your parents, most likely, to support the opposition. They stopped the Metro in the summer," said Lukashenko.
Here is what the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on the Minsk Metro strike on August 22, 1995:
"According to the chairman of the Metro's trade union committee, Nikolai Kanakh, the situation intensified this spring when the head of the city Metro, Vladimir Nabezhko, issued an order canceling the 10% safety and accident-free work allowances and reduced the size of bonuses. By doing so, Nabezhko violated the collective agreement established between the employers and the trade union. (Two trade unions operate within the Metro: the official union and the Belarusian Independent Trade Union. Since the breach of the collective agreement, they have been acting together).
Attempts by the trade unions to negotiate with the head of the Metro did not yield results, and the decision was made to start a strike."
A few days prior, the workers of the trolleybus depot in Gomel announced a strike, followed by one in Minsk, as reported by Euroradio in late 2021. None of the publications of the time — either state-run or independent — reported on any political demands from the strikers. The WTF team found that their concerns were limited to compensation for delayed salary payments, the resignation of their management, and similar issues. The only person to claim that these were political and not labor protests was Alexander Lukashenko.
"On Sunday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appeared on the television program “Resonance”. He stated that the Metro strike was orchestrated by nationalist forces led by the Belarusian Popular Front, which suffered a crushing defeat in the elections failing to secure a single seat in the parliament," reported Kommersant newspaper on August 22, 1995.
As a result of those protests, the authorities met the demands of the striking trolleybus drivers by paying them their delayed wages, while the Metro workers' protests were crushed by OMON forces, and railway workers were brought in to replace them.
