Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday he needed to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning street protests rocking the country were not just a threat to Belarus. Mass unrest has followed Mr Lukashenko’s re-election victory last Sunday, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets accusing him of rigging the vote. “The aggression against Belarus is developing,” he said in a meeting with government officials. “There is a need to contact Putin so that I can talk to him now, because it is not a threat to just Belarus anymore,” he continued, according to state news agency Belta. “Defending Belarus today is no less than defending our entire space, the union state, and an example to others … Those who roam the streets, most of them do not understand this.” The state news agency later said he had discussed the protests with Mr Putin in a phone call, but gave few details. “The presidents discussed the situation that is unfolding inside and around Belarus,” Belta reported, citing Mr Lukashenko’s press service. Earlier, the leaders of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania called for “free and fair” elections in Belarus, which Mr Lukashenko — known as “Europe’s last dictator” — has ruled for 26 years. Moscow has yet to officially respond to Mr Lukashenko’s appeals. Russian government observers earlier described the presidential election as free and fair, though the Kremlin has remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis on whether it would be willing to prop up the Belarusian regime. Margarita Simonyan, the head of Kremlin-controlled news channel RT, suggested on Friday it was time to send in “the little green men”, a reference to the Russian soldiers without insignia who appeared in Crimea in 2014. But Russian public polling shows there is little support for closer integration with Belarus, and analysts say direct intervention would be unlikely to boost Vladimir Putin’s standing in the same way as the annexation of Crimea. Russian state news channels are leading on the rallies, reporting that the demonstrations are peaceful and showing images of protesters handing flowers to riot police. The coverage is in sharp contrast with the Ukraine crisis, in which Kremlin-controlled media presented pro-democracy demonstrators as fascist thugs. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was praying for a resolution of the situation in Belarus, his press service said.