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.