Almost two years after the rigged presidential election in Belarus and the huge mass protests that followed, the power apparatus has crushed most of the resistance. But not everything.
– Some of the opposition’s political leaders are in prison and some of them have fled. Those who remain are rather activists, like a kind of hand when the brain has moved abroad, says Alesia Rudnik, a Belarusian political scientist who is doing her doctorate at Karlstad University.
Rudnik is also affiliated with the Belarusian think tank Center for New Ideas. Until recently, she was chairman of the association Sweden’s Belarusians.
Political actions are planned from abroad, she says. In Telegram channels with tens of thousands of followers, opposition exile Belarusians hand out information to compatriots in their home country, such as printing leaflets about the Ukraine war and putting them in their neighbors’ mailboxes.
Minsk, November 2020: Protesters form a chain as riot police approach. The police force carried away, imprisoned and abused thousands of people during the protests. Stock Photography.War revolts
The opposition, organized by opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, is led by a coordinating council in Poland. Alternative “public embassies” have been set up in several countries.
– The further away from Belarus, the greater the opportunities to influence people’s opinion now, says Alesia Rudnik.
When the war in Ukraine escalated in February – and Russian forces entered via Belarus – domestic discontent manifested itself. Russian railroads were sabotaged and Belarusian hackers helped slow down the offensive.
The few opinion polls conducted from abroad indicate that just under a third of Belarusians in Belarus support Lukashenko. Only a few percent of the population supports Belarus entering the war on Russia’s side.
– And so it is also among some of those who usually support Lukashenko, says Rudnik.
– It is the most important basis for Alexander Lukashenko’s power that is being challenged: that he, above all, has always promised to guarantee peace.
Several hundred Belarusians have traveled to Ukraine and formed their own unit to fight alongside Ukrainian forces. Here, some Belarusian volunteers have laid down their arms during an exercise outside Warsaw, before leaving for Ukraine. The picture was taken last Friday. Better with Majdan?
The peaceful protests in 2020 had hundreds of thousands of participants, but were slowly but surely crushed by the security apparatus, which received Russian support. Today, Belarus is even more closed and even more closely linked to Russia.
– What many are discussing now are violent protests. Many believe that if Belarusians had done as Ukrainians did in 2013 and 2014, Belarus would be a free country, says Alesia Rudnik, who herself has difficulty taking a stand on the issue.
– The Belarusians were so careful and tried not to provoke, but it was perhaps too peaceful to achieve the goal. The country is not democratic. When it is an autocratic regime, it is very difficult to bring about a regime change without any other factors.
Rudnik has no great hopes. In the short term, she sees two possible scenarios: that Belarus will eventually become part of Russia or that the war will end and that Lukashenko will have to continue as before. There she sees the latter alternative as the least bad.
– As long as Putin remains, Belarus will never be able to become an established democracy. Now we know that he is ready to do anything to not have democratic leaders at Russia’s border.
Everyday life in Minsk, the week before the war in Ukraine started in February. A woman passes a huge billboard for the then forthcoming referendum in which Alexander Lukashenko’s power was expanded even more. Stock Photography. Get to stay here
If the outside world turns its eyes from Belarus, the exile opposition also risks falling into oblivion, fears Alesia Rudnik.
She also fears that many Belarusians have nowhere to go. Last year and the year before last, 156 asylum cases were decided for Belarusians in Sweden and five of these were given the right to stay. This is despite the fact that many had clear evidence of persecution in Belarus, according to Rudnik.
In addition, many Belarusians who fled last year sought refuge in Ukraine. Now that they have to flee once again, they do not have the same right to protection as Ukrainians.
– Sweden is doing a great job of protecting Ukrainians. It is a good example of how groups in need of protection should be treated.
Alesia Rudnik works with the Belarusian opposition leadership in Warsaw. She also writes articles for the American think tank Atlantic Council.