Looking out across the vast crowd, the protesters could not quite believe it. Was this really Belarus? How had their country changed so quickly? A week ago in the same spot, riot police had used batons and rubber bullets to terrorise those protesting against Alexander Lukashenko’s rigged election victory. Yet despite thousands of arrests and the shocking violence meted out to so many of them, the mood in the country has turned from despair to resilience to euphoria as the week progressed. It culminated in the biggest demonstration in the country’s history on Sunday afternoon, with unofficial estimates putting the crowd at more than 100,000 people. It took place in a sweeping expanse of land near a second world war memorial, where people sang, danced, chanted and flashed each other victory signs in collective catharsis at the prospect of political change. One problem, however, remains for the protesters. Officially at least, Lukashenko is still president. He emerged on Sunday to give an angry, paranoid and in places threatening speech to supporters outside parliament, in which he made it clear he did not intend to back down without a fight. “If you destroy Lukashenko, destroy your first president, it will be the beginning of the end for you,” he said, mopping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief as he addressed the crowd in the August sunshine. He has also raised the possibility of asking Russia the intervene militarily to quell the unrest. The speech sets up a crucial and nervous week ahead for Belarusians, as the protests take on what feels like irreversible momentum, but with Lukashenko still in control of the police and army. That is about all he does control, and his legitimacy has eroded more and more by the day. The protest coalition has broadened with remarkable speed over the past week, from a small segment of politically active opponents to encompass teachers, doctors and factory workers, many of whom have announced strikes. There have even been demands for change from state television staff, the regime’s loyal cheerleaders who have traditionally helped get Lukashenko’s message out to the public. The sheer scale of discontent has led many to doubt that either his entourage or the Kremlin will want to save him. In another sign of Lukashenko’s weakening grasp, the Belarusian ambassador to Slovakia, Igor Leshchenya, became the first serving diplomat to back the protesters. “I stand in solidarity with those who came out on the streets of Belarusian cities with peaceful marches so that their voice could be heard,” he said in a video released on Sunday. He said one of his daughter’s classmates had been badly beaten by police, and compared the events of the past week with the actions of Joseph Stalin’s NKVD, the secret police that tortured and executed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1930s. At the rally on Sunday afternoon, the opposition politician Maria Kolesnikova called on the security forces, diplomats and state television workers to join the protests. “This is your last chance. Fight your fear like all of us did. We were all scared, but we fought our fear. Join us and we will support you.” Kolesnikova is the only one of the three women leading the opposition campaign who has remained in the country. The candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, fled to neighbouring Lithuania the night after the vote, apparently after receiving threats to her family. Her husband remains in jail. She has promised fresh and free elections if installed as president. The post-election protests have been largely leaderless, loosely organised by a number of popular channels on the Telegram messaging app. Even though Kolesnikova addressed the crowd on Sunday, there was no stage from which to do so. Only a few hundred people heard her, her voice carried by a small portable speaker. “For the first time in 26 years, we feel like we live in a free European nation, and together we will win,” she said. “The more intensity with which we continue our protest, the quicker change will happen.” Lukashenko ruled out compromises at his rally, insisting that “we will die as a people, as a state, as a nation” if the vote is re-run. He claimed Nato soldiers were waiting at the western borders to take over the country. His rally was a pale imitation of the protest movement, with many in attendance bussed in from the regions. According to an official tally, 65,000 took part, but the figure was as implausible as the 80% of the vote Lukashenko is claimed to have won. There was some genuine support for the president on display. A group of middle-aged women shouted that the protesters were fascists and should be crushed, a hundreds of plainclothes security men wearing earpieces roamed the crowd. Speeches by around a dozen angry warm-up speakers painted a picture of recent events that was a grotesque inversion of reality. Many blamed protesters rather than authorities for the violence, when in fact the protests have been almost exclusively peaceful. The systematic beating and torture of prisoners by riot police is likely to go down as some of the worst excesses by authorities in recent European history. As Lukashenko has dug in, so the protesters have become more determined, but there still appears little appetite for violence or storming government buildings. It is clear, however, that they feel the time for dialogue has passed. Given the repeated shouts of “murderer” and “resign”, they are unlikely to be satisfied with anything less than fresh elections. “Of course I always knew what kind of country I lived in, but I didn’t think the authorities could do anything so awful, and I didn’t think the people could do something so inspiring,” said Evgeny, a 32-year-old programmer who has protested for the last three days. “I can’t even remember a time before Lukashenko. That moustache has been staring at me my whole life, and now I’ve had enough. We’ve all had enough. We need new elections.” As night fell, protesters continued the carnival atmosphere, flashing victory signs as they promenaded along Minsk’s main avenue and passing vehicles gave them honks of support. But a passing convoy of more than 50 military vehicles, apparently carrying riot police and other troops, was a reminder that a darker turn of events is still possible.