Violent clashes between protesters and state police erupted in Minsk following the announcement that long-time Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko had won the Dec. 19 presidential election with an estimated 72.2 percent of the vote. Protests following elections in Belarus are nothing new — around 10,000 took to the streets following the 2006 election — and state security forces and police appear to have been well-prepared for the conflict; some reports said hundreds of security agents posed as protesters before the crackdown, and police waited in buildings around the streets leading to the main squares in order to sweep into the protesters. However, these protests are reported to have involved 25,000-40,000 people in the streets — a far higher number than of those in 2006. While the numbers are currently highly disputed in the media (it is difficult to distinguish between those rallying after the election and those actually protesting the outcome), a significantly larger turnout raises the question of whether the country's opposition had been aided in any way by outside forces. In the past, it has been difficult for the opposition to stage such organized protests of the size seen following the Dec. 19 election, though the opposition had been preparing for Lukashenko's re-election for months (his victory is widely believed to have been rigged, as his popularity is estimated to be below 45 percent). There is no shortage of outside forces that would have an interest in aiding the opposition's demonstration against Lukashenko. Minsk has had a series of disputes recently with Moscow, a power that has shown the ability to organize unrest in its former Soviet states in the past . But Lukashenko has a hostile relationship with the West as well, and there are a number of pro-Western powers (particularly Poland) that would have an interest in helping the opposition, even if the only real result of the protests was a public demonstration of the heavy-handed and violent reaction of Lukashenko's government. Both sides have tried in the past to undermine Lukashenko's legitimacy, though it is unclear at this time if they (or any other outside force) aided in the mass uprising.