It had been clear for a while that discontent with Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule in Belarus was on the rise, but it came as a surprise to most observers – and to the protesters themselves – at just how quickly it has turned into a movement threatening to topple his regime. The events in the country over the past three weeks have been some of the most fascinating, fast-moving and unpredictable of any story I’ve covered.

I arrived in Minsk on 11 August, two days after Lukashenko declared victory in elections with an implausible 80% of the vote. The protests that followed had been ruthlessly suppressed, and on the evening I showed up, riot police in balaclavas were pulling people out of their cars at random and beating them up.

Those people still brave enough to go out protesting were chased into courtyards, pummelled and then taken to a notorious prison on Okrestina Street on the city’s outskirts. In the days after, people released from there would tell horrific stories of abuse.

Being a journalist provided some protection but not much: dozens were picked up by riot police and some assaulted; one American photographer, clearly wearing press identification, was shot at.

My first day in Minsk was also challenging because the authorities had completely shut down internet access across the country. Using a medley of VPNs, I could just about check my email on my apartment wifi, but nothing else, and mobile internet did not work at all. It was a reminder of what being a journalist in the pre-internet era must have been like, with the difference that now all the readers abroad had access to Twitter and breaking news; it was only we on the ground who had no idea what was happening outside.

After the initial post-election violence, things calmed down, but there was always menace in the background. Columns of army trucks, the shields of the riot troops packed inside bulging against the tarpaulin, were regularly on the move throughout town. Vans with darkened windows and no plates could often be seen lurking on street corners, men in balaclavas sitting in the front seats; I’ll never look at a Ford Transit in the same way again.

One night I came home to find two police in full riot gear waiting outside my apartment block’s entrance. They were probably not for me, but, not wanting to begin a discussion, I walked swiftly past and imposed on a friend for the night.

Heavy-set plain-clothed observers, known locally as tikhari (something like “creepers”), were ubiquitous. At protests, they walked by, ostentatiously filming everyone in attendance on camcorders. It was always possible to tell if Lukashenko was in the vicinity by the sudden increase in their numbers. At a speech he gave in the main square one Sunday, it seemed like half the crowd were wearing earpieces.

This sinister system had always been lurking underneath the surface of what is otherwise a pleasant, laid-back and friendly country. Everyone in Belarus knew what kind of government they had, but many felt they could live a decent life parallel to the state rather than in opposition to it – a mode of living that was known as “internal emigration” in Soviet times.

“It’s hard to believe that all of this stuff can still happen in the 21st century, in the age of artificial intelligence, satellites, Tesla and iPhones,” Maria Kolesnikova, a convivial and fearless flautist who has become one of the figureheads of the opposition movement, told me. But maybe, in fact, access to those things makes it easier. Lukashenko has never had pretensions to be totalitarian, and so it was much less stressful to co-exist in parallel with his kind of system than with its Soviet predecessor: don’t watch state television, don’t become active in politics, buy yourself an iPhone and get on with your life.

The violence after the election changed this equation. It showed that living a parallel life was no longer possible – that anyone could get caught up in state repression. Over and over again, people told me they had never had much love for Lukashenko, but now realised it was time to turn their passive distaste into active resistance. There was a real sense of catharsis at the huge, carnival-like rallies held in Minsk the past two Sundays, a delight at finally being able to say something that had remained unsaid for so long.

It’s not only the “creative class” of young professionals who are protesting. It’s all kinds of people who just a few years ago might have been pro-Lukashenko: factory workers, rural grandmothers and even some state employees. Early on in my trip, I mentioned I was a journalist to a middle-aged cashier in a shop, whom I had presumed was bound to be a Lukashenko fan. “What do you think, are we going to win? Are we finally going to kick that bastard out?” was her reply, to my surprise.

Lukashenko, living in a coddled information bubble surrounded by sycophants, has appeared genuinely surprised by the scale of the discontent. His PR team has wheeled out the same tropes the Kremlin used successfully in Ukraine six years ago, about neo-Nazi radicals trying to bring chaos and sow discord with Russia.

In Ukraine, there was a kernel of truth to expand and distort, as well as a divided country to play with, but in Belarus it just sounds ridiculous. As one person put it to me: “You send men in balaclavas to pick us off the streets, imprison us and beat us up, and we’re the fascists here?”

It’s incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next, with so many variables in play. Will people inside Lukashenko’s close circle finally mount a challenge to him, realising that he’s become more of a liability than a saviour? Will he crack down violently, possibly leading part of the protest movement to become radicalised? Will Russia intervene to replace him, or force a weak Lukashenko into huge concessions?

The only thing that is certain is that Belarus is not going to be boring over the next weeks and months.

I left the country inspired by the power, dignity and resolve of the protesters, but also feeling that the example of Belarus was a warning to people living “parallel lives”, whether in dictatorships or democracies, of the dangers of extended political apathy. That feeling was summed up by a dark joke that someone had painted on to a poster at Sunday’s protest:

“Do you know which concentration camp we’re being taken to?”

“Oh no, I don’t, actually: I’m not interested in politics.”