Around 300 opposition supporters danced and sang folk songs in freezing weather overnight during protests against Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election.
The protests, unprecedented in the former Soviet state where security services usually crack down quickly on dissent, began on Sunday after Mr Lukashenko was declared the landslide winner of polls branded as flawed by international monitors.
Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich
The protest has had echoes of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" that brought hundreds of thousands on to streets in neighbouring Ukraine. But there has been no sign of it reaching the same scale, even though the crowd has sometimes swelled to thousands.
The opposition has called for a huge rally on Saturday to demand a rerun of the elections.
Despite his 12 years of Soviet-style rule that has made him a pariah in the West, Mr Lukashenko is genuinely popular among the ten million Belarussians for having ensured relative political and economic stability.
Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich conceded yesterday the rallies were not enough to topple Mr Lukashenko (51),
a former state farm director. "I do not think that such a protest can unseat a dictator," Mr Milinkevich said on a visit to October Square.
Electoral authorities are due to meet this morning to validate Mr Lukashenko's re-election and are set to shrug off objections to the conduct of the polls.
Initial official results showed Mr Lukashenko won with 82.6 per cent of the vote, while Mr Milinkevich came second with 6 per cent.
The election result has set the United States and Western Europe at odds with Russia. Washington, echoing the findings of international monitors, has accused Mr Lukashenko of intimidating opponents. Moscow has congratulated him.