22 Jan 2025 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News
Belarusians began 2025 in a state of anxiety. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before – another presidential “election” is approaching, or rather, another dictatorial re-election. There hasn’t been a free and fair electoral process in our country for decades, so it’s not as though we don’t already know the outcome: over 80% for Lukashenka, written in by the Central Electoral Committee.
The atmosphere is tense. Ever since the protest movement began in response to the fraudulent 2020 election, we haven’t experienced peace. Lukashenka took Belarusians’ pro-democratic aspirations personally (as he should) and hasn’t stopped his relentless repression for a single day. There are more than 1,300 political prisoners, with thousands more having already served their unjust, politically-motivated sentences. The leaders of our resistance are held completely incommunicado behind bars, and the only way we know they’re alive is when the regime uses them for propaganda. Maria Kalesnikava, Viktar Babaryka, Ihar Losik – they’re dragged from their cells, dusted off and paraded in front of cameras for twisted manipulations. Yet their dignity and strength remain unbreakable, fuelling our anger and disgust toward their captors.
As the election draws closer, the regime continues its threats. Apart from ongoing mass detentions – many still related to participating in the 2020 protests – Lukashenka announced last month that any public resistance during the “election” on 26 January will be met with a complete internet shutdown. Terrible? Yes. New or shocking? No.
About two weeks before the election, Belarusian independent media outlet Motolko Help reported that access to YouTube, Telegram and Discord was temporarily blocked. The regime is clearly testing out the tactics it used in 2020. For the first time, however, Lukashenka has admitted that the 2020 shutdown was ordered by the regime, not caused by some foreign intervention.
I vividly remember the days of the 2020 election and the beginning of the protests. I was fortunate to be involved in the epicentre of the activities. At the time, I was a culture journalist in Minsk, far from politics or civil activism but not far enough to miss what was happening. When a team of British journalists and documentary filmmakers needed a fixer on the ground ahead of the election, I gladly agreed to help.
It was just days before the election, and many foreign journalists still hadn’t received accreditation from Lukashenka’s Foreign Ministry. A classic dictatorial trick: don’t openly forbid anything, just don’t allow it.
It’s hard to explain how one becomes so desensitised to human rights abuses. The political and civil awakening of Belarusians didn’t happen overnight. We were tired. Tired of the regime’s response to the pandemic, denying Covid-19 and leaving us to fend for ourselves. Tired of seeing Lukashenka’s challengers like Siarhei Tsikhanouski and Viktar Babaryka being detained before they could officially run against the dictator. Tired of watching solidarity chains being brutally dispersed by police. Tired of decades of fake elections.
So, we were prepared. Telegram was boiling with new chats, organisational channels and news coverage – our safe space where thousands of Belarusians tracked real information and self-organised, following protest tips and updates. We were all equipped with VPN apps for security and for reading independent Belarusian media sites, which had been blocked in the country. We gathered our physical protest in dispersed groups, making it harder to track and suppress. But still, we couldn’t anticipate every dictatorial trick up the regime’s sleeve, and the scale of resistance was unprecedented.
On the morning of 9 August 2020, the main election day, mobile providers announced technical issues “due to circumstances beyond our control”. As there was a state-owned monopoly on the internet, private companies had no choice but to comply with the government’s non-public orders to restrict access to the internet.
But the election day plan for Belarusians aspiring for change was clear: go to your polling station, vote for opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, take a picture of your ballot for independent online counting, and if possible, wait outside the polling station for the local commission to count the result.
That evening, many independent Belarusian and foreign journalists gathered at Tsikhanouskaya’s team headquarters. Maria Kalesnikava was also there as another leader of the united team and representative of jailed Viktar Babaryka, and Maksim Znak, as their lawyer. Many representatives of civic initiatives were also at the headquarters. It felt like a community of white knights, leading us to a bright future.
I remember seeing a Radio Svaboda (the Belarusian service from Radio Free Europe) journalist there wearing a press vest with a helmet attached to his belt. For a moment, I thought it was a bicycle helmet, assuming he’d cycled there since central stations on the Minsk metro were closed to prevent gatherings. Then it hit me: it was a protective helmet. That’s when the gravity of our situation truly sank in.
As the evening progressed, the atmosphere grew tense. Tsikhanouskaya’s team collected independent data from polling stations, showing overwhelming support for her and the change she represented. Outside, crowds carrying white-red-white national flags (which were abolished in 1995 in favour of a Soviet-era style flag) marched toward the Minsk Hero City Obelisk. Despite the internet blackout, people had organised and followed earlier calls from Telegram channels to gather in specific parts of Minsk, determined to peacefully defend their votes, voices and rights. Most journalists rushed to cover the growing protests.
Within just a few hours, euphoria gave way to a harsh reality: Lukashenka would never willingly relinquish power.
That night, I heard stun grenades for the first time. As I waited in the centre for my journalist group, who had plunged into the crowds, the ground shook with every explosion at the Obelisk and other parts of Minsk. I lost count of the grenades launched. Without internet access, nobody fully knew what was happening across the city.
For hours, I stayed up, calling friends around the city and country, piecing together information, and relaying updates via SMS to friends living in Lithuania who could see news online and were worried sick about us.
This pattern repeated for three nights. Peaceful protests. Police attacks. Internet blackouts. No decent reaction from the regime apart from the predictable announcement on Monday 10 August: Lukashenka had “won” with 80% of the votes. How surprising.
The most harrowing part was the morning after each night of violence. As the internet partially flickered back on for a short time, Belarusians flooded independent media and Telegram channels with photos and videos they had captured. We saw tens of thousands protesting across Belarus, standing unarmed against fully-equipped riot police. Stun grenades and rubber bullets caused open wounds. Men and women were savagely beaten. Detainees were tortured in police stations, prison trucks and the notorious Okrestina Street Detention Facility. Our cameraman returned with a wound in his collarbone from a stun grenade fragment.
Then came the first fatality from police violence: Aliaksandr Taraikouski. Investigations have found that he was shot in the chest, and the world was horrified alongside us, seeing the footage captured by an Associated Press correspondent. But when the tragedy first came to light, the government tried to claim that he died when an explosive device detonated in his hand, which they said he planned to throw at police. There is no evidence of this.
It was terrifying. It still looks terrifying as I re-watch footage from the protests or documentaries about the events of 2020 in Belarus.
We knew one thing for certain – we couldn’t move forward with Lukashenka. We still can’t. We continue to fight for our rights and freedoms, navigating countless violations by the dictator and his regime. Sometimes, it feels impossible to imagine what achieving our goals might feel like in practice. But as generations of Belarusians have paid a high price for the future, we cannot pass this burden to the next. It is our responsibility, and we rely on democratic countries to stand with us on this path.
There is too much at stake in the world right now, especially in our region. Having one less dictatorship is a victory for all of us.
29 Nov 2024 | Belarus, News, Russia, Ukraine, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
Mikhail Viktorovich Feigelman started working at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow in 1980. Eleven years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, funding and decent modern equipment were rare for Russian scientists but there was suddenly intellectual freedom.
“This is why I stayed in Russia at this time, despite the hardships,” the 70-year-old physicist told Index. “This freedom during the 1990s was very important, but it didn’t last long.”
In May 2022, just months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Feigelman fled to western Europe.
“I left exclusively because of the war,” he said. “I could no longer live in Russia anymore, where I see many parallels with Nazi Germany. I will not return home until the death of Putin.”
Initially, Feigelman took up a position at a research laboratory in Grenoble, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. Today, he is employed as a researcher at Nanocenter in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
“I have not experienced any prejudice or discrimination in either France or Slovenia,” he said.
“But in Germany – at least in some institutions – there is a [ban] on Russian scientists, and it is forbidden to invite them for official scientific visits.”
These measures stem from a decision taken by the European Commission in April 2022 to suspend all co-operation with Russian entities in research, science and innovation.
That included the cutting of all funding that was previously supplied to Russian science organisations under the EU’s €95.5 billon research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe.
The boycotting had already begun elsewhere. In late February 2022, the Journal of Molecular Structure, a Netherlands-based peer-reviewed journal that specialises in chemistry, decided not to consider any manuscripts authored by scientists working at Russian Federation institutions.
One former employee at the journal, who wished to remain anonymous, said Russian scientists were always welcomed to publish in the journal. “A decision had been taken, for humanitarian reasons, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not to accept any submission authored by scientists (whatever their nationality) working for Russian institutions,” they said.
Last January, Christian Jelsch became the journal’s editor. “This policy to ban Russian manuscripts was implemented by the previous editor,” he said. “But it was terminated when I started as editor.”
Feigelman believes all steps taken “to prevent institutional co-operation between Europe and Russia are completely correct and necessary.”
But he added: “Contact from European scientists with individual scientists must be continued, as long as those scientists in question are not supporters of Putin.”
Alexandra Borissova Saleh does not share that view.
“Boycotts in science don’t work,” she said. “There is a vast literature out there on this topic.”
She was previously head of communication at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and head of the science desk at Tass News Agency in Moscow.
Today, Borissova Saleh lives in Italy, where she works as a freelance science journalist and media marketing consultant. She has not returned to Russia since 2019, mainly because of how scientists are now treated there.
“If you are a top researcher in Russia who has presented your work abroad, you could likely face a long-term prison sentence, which ultimately could cost you your life,” she said.
“But the main reason I have not returned to Russia in five years is because of the country’s ‘undesirable organisations’ law.”
First passed in 2015 – and recently updated with even harsher measures – the law states that any organisations in Russia whose activities “pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order, defence or security of the state” are liable to be fined or their members can face up to six years in prison. This past July,
The Moscow Times, an independent English-language and Russian-language online newspaper, was declared undesirable by the authorities in Moscow.
“I’m now classed as a criminal because of science articles I published in Russia and in other media outlets,” Borissova Saleh explained.
Shortly after Putin invaded Ukraine, an estimated 7,000 Russian scientists, mathematicians and academics signed an open letter to the Russian president, voicing their public opposition to the war.
According to analysis carried out by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, since February 2022 at least 2,500 Russian scientists have left and severed ties with Russia.
Lyubov Borusyak, a professor and leading researcher of the Laboratory of Socio-Cultural Educational Practices at Moscow City University, carried out a detailed study of Russian academics included in that mass exodus.
Most people she interviewed worked in liberal arts, humanities and mathematics. A large bulk of them fled to the USA and others took up academic positions in countries including Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands and Lithuania. A common obstacle many faced was their Russian passport.
It’s a bureaucratic nightmare for receiving a working and living visa, Borusyak explained.
“Most of these Russian exiles abroad have taken up positions in universities that are at a lower level than they would have had in Russia, and quite a few of them have been denied the right to participate in scientific conferences and publish in international scientific journals.”
She said personal safety for academics, especially those with liberal views, is a definite concern in Russia today, where even moderate, reasonable behaviour can be deemed as extremist and a threat to national security.
“I feel anxious,” she said. “There are risks and I’m afraid they are serious.”
Hannes Jung, a retired German physicist believes it’s imperative scientists do not detach themselves from matters of politics, but that scientists should stay neutral when they are doing science.
Jung is a prominent activist and co-ordinator for Science4Peace – a cohort of scientists working in particle physics at institutions across Europe. He said their aim was “to create a forum that promotes scientific collaboration across the world as a driver for peace”.
He helped form Science4Peace shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, as he felt the West’s decision to completely sever ties with Russian scientists was counterproductive and unnecessary.
“At [German science research centre] Desy, where I previously worked, all communication channels were cut, and we were not allowed to send emails from Desy accounts to Russian colleagues,” said Jung. “Common publications and common conferences with Russian scientists were strictly forbidden, too.”
He cited various examples of scientists working together, even when their respective governments had ongoing political tensions, and, in some instances, military conflicts. Among them is the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (Sesame) in Jordan: an inter-governmental research centre that brings together many countries in the Middle East.
“The Sesame project gets people from Palestine, Israel and Iran working together,” Jung said.
The German physicist learned about the benefits of international co-operation among scientists during the hot years of the Cold War.
In 1983, when still a West German citizen, he started working for Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Based on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, the inter-governmental organisation, which was founded in 1954, operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. At Cern, Jung was introduced to scientists from the German Democratic Republic, Poland and the Soviet Union. “[In] the Soviet Union the method for studying and researching physics was done in a very different way from in the West, so there was much you could learn about by interacting with Soviet scientists,” he said.
In December 2023, the council of Cern, which currently has 22 member states, officially announced that it was ending co-operation with Russia and Belarus as a response to the “continuing illegal military invasion of Ukraine”.
Jung believes Cern’s co-operation with Russian and Belarussian scientists should have continued, saying there was no security risk for Cern members working with scientists from Belarus and Russia.
“There is a very clear statement in Cern’s constitution, explaining how every piece of scientific research carried out at the organisation has no connection for science that can be used for military [purposes],” he said.
In June, the Cern council announced it would, however, keep its ongoing co-operation with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), located in Dubna, near Moscow.
“I hope Cern will continue to keep these channels open to reduce the risk for nuclear war happening,” said Jung.
Can cultural and academic boycotts work to influence social and political change? Sometimes.
They seemed to play a role, for example, in the breakup of apartheid South Africa (1948 to 1994). This topic was addressed in a paper published in science journal Nature in June 2022, by Michael D Gordin.
The American historian of science argued that for science sanctions to work – or to help produce a change of mindset in the regime – the political leadership of the country being sanctioned has to care about scientists and science. “And Russia does not seem to care,” Gordin wrote.
His article pointed to the limited investments in scientific research in Russia over the past decade; the chasing after status and rankings rather than improving fundamentals; the lacklustre response to Covid-19; and the designation of various scientific collaborations and NGOs as “foreign agents”, which have almost all been kicked off Russian soil.
Indeed, Putin’s contempt and suspicion of international scientific standards fits with his strongman theory of politics. But such nationalist propaganda will ultimately weaken Russia’s position in the ranking of world science.
Borissova Saleh said trying to create science in isolation was next to impossible.
“Science that is not international cannot and will not work. Soviet science was international and Soviet scientists were going to international scientific conferences, even if they were accompanied by the KGB,” she said.
Sanctioning Russian scientists will undoubtedly damage Russian science in the long term, but it’s unlikely to alter Russia’s present political reality.
Authoritarian regimes, after all, care about only their own personal survival.
7 Aug 2024 | Belarus, Lithuania, News, Ukraine, Volume 53.02 Summer 2024
Andrej Strizhak, a human rights activist and Belarus exile, uses an electric scooter to go around the streets of Vilnius’s old town.
“It is a very convenient means of transportation,” he told Index, sitting in a coffee shop at The House of the Signatories where Lithuania’s Act of Independence was signed in 1918.
Strizhak is founder of the Belarus Solidarity Foundation, Bysol, a humanitarian organisation which gives financial help to political prisoners, striking workers and other activists critical of the repressive regime of President Aliaksandr Lukashenka. Recently Bysol has also focused on aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion that Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022.
For Strizhak, both struggles are connected.
“Belarus’s ‘freedom key’ is in Ukraine, and many Belarusians are helping fight the war in Ukraine,” he said. “If Putin fails, then Lukashenka will lose his principal ally.”
His colleague, former male model, fitness trainer and media celebrity turned political activist Andrey Tkachov, joined us in the café. Tkachov like Strizhak is in his thirties. He’s an immensely tall and striking figure, dressed in black. He oversees the management of the Medical Solidarity Fund, operating under the Bysol Foundation umbrella. He sees the conflict in stark terms.
“It is a war between good and evil. Russia is knowingly bombing hospitals and we are working on getting medical supplies and equipment.”
Bysol has raised over $10.7 million and acts as a platform for other organisations or individuals to raise funds for humanitarian causes.
Most of it has been done through cryptocurrency because, as Strizhak explained, it is “hard for the government to trace these transactions.”
During the first days of the Ukrainian war, Bysol received requests for cash to buy vehicles, drones and first aid kits; funds were needed for emergency contraceptive and rape kits for Ukrainian war victims of sexual abuse and for legal fees to pursue justice for war crimes. Within a few days, Bysol raised over $130,000 for Ukrainian humanitarian causes and for Belarusian volunteers working in Ukraine.
As the war progressed, the foundation used its money to aid wounded Belarusian fighters to obtain medical assistance, move to Poland or Lithuania and heal from PTSD. Bysol handed over radios, sets of uniforms for medical doctors and anti-thermal camouflage cloaks to the Belarusians fighting in Ukraine.
They gave others help too.
For those who refused to fight or faced repression for opposing the war, Bysol staff drafted manuals on evacuation from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. They also posted instructions in a Telegram chat group, BysolEvacuation. Users issued advice on how to leave the war zone, discussed visa procedures and shared experiences on border crossings.
Strizhak and other activists first established Bysol in August 2020, as a response to violence against the opposition after the Belarus presidential election which saw Lukashenka winning a sixth term in office. Strizhak had already been detained several times by the police for his political activities and during the election summer, friends advised him to go on “vacation” abroad. He traveled to Kyiv, hoping to spend a month in Ukraine. There, building on his humanitarian work and crowdfunding skills, Strizhak came up with the idea of a fund-raising organisation.
He was joined in Ukraine by Tkachov, with whom he had worked during the Covid-19 pandemic and who had just been released from police custody. Tkachov had stayed in Belarus and joined anti-government protests in Minsk, witnessing police using grenades and shooting at peaceful opposition.
“The day after the elections, my friend and I took a ride around Minsk to check the aftermath of the protests,” Tkachov told Index. “An OMON (special police force) car stopped us and took us to a detention centre.” Officers gave Tkachov some “special attention” for his critical political opinions. He was handcuffed and beaten.
“Some of us fainted from the pain and from the inflicted injuries. We laid in puddles of blood and urine and prayed to be alive,” he said. Eventually, he lost consciousness when a soldier stepped on his neck.
“I regained consciousness only when police brought me to the prison, and a soldier poured water on me,” he said.
Together with the other 35 detainees, he spent three days in a cell suitable to accommodate 10 people.
In the late autumn of 2020 both dissidents decided to move to Lithuania, a member state of the EU and NATO, determined to expand Bysol. “Ukraine did not feel safe enough for us,” explained Strizhak.
Strizhak first raised money through a friend in the Netherlands who opened a fundraising account on Facebook. “We couldn’t do it from Belarus or Ukraine. Only people who live in ‘the white-world’ – the USA or Western Europe – can open fundraising accounts on Facebook,” he said.
Help started pouring in and more so when they were established in Vilnius. The most active supporters of the fund were and still are the Belarusian diaspora.
Walking a thin line between publicity and safety, Bysol has come to rely on cryptocurrency. Using traditional currency, customers rely on bank services and often pay high fees for financial transactions that might take a few days to complete, but cryptocurrency is a digital currency based on a network spread across many computers, unregulated by central government authorities. Unlike traditional financial institutions, opening a cryptocurrency wallet does not require identification verification, credit, or background checks: a person needs just a laptop or a smartphone with an internet connection and there is virtually no way for the government officials to stop, censor or reverse these transactions.
People find Bysol through social media and by word of mouth and the foundation follows a rigorous verification process before providing any help.
“We can’t name recipients and they can’t say ‘Thank you’ to us,” Strizak said.
Tkachov focuses on supporting Belarusian medical professionals and medical causes.
“Medical doctors actively expressed their opposition to the government’s actions. They were the ones who saw wounded, beaten and dead protesters. They described people arriving at the hospital as if they were brought from a battlefield with gunshot wounds or limbs ripped off by grenade explosions,” he said. Many medical doctors who expressed their disagreement about the government’s actions were laid off from state-run hospitals.
The Department of Investigation Committee in Minsk has initiated criminal proceedings against Strizhak who is accused of providing “training of individuals to take part in group activities, grossly violating public order” and financing extremism. Bysol itself has been labelled an extremist organisation and Belarus has listed its founders on the country’s wanted list and the wanted list of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), made up of Russia and other ex-Soviet states still in Russia’s orbit.
Tkachov said he was always interested in history, especially events leading to the outbreak of World War II. “I could not understand why the powerful states could not prevent it,” he said. “Witnessing unfolding events in Ukraine, I finally understood it. When I think about how much more needs to be done, I worry my efforts are not enough, or are not effective enough. We need to help many people.”
Since his early years, Strizhak was determined to bring change to society: “I can’t tolerate hypocrisy, lies or double standards,” he said. He travelled to the Donbas region of Ukraine from 2017 to 2020 to document war crimes committed by pro-Russian separatists. He has mourned the death of close work partners.
Although he is now far from the war zone, he visualises his efforts with a consciousness of the samurai way of “dying before going into battle.” Like Japan’s ancient warriors, he said, he is waging his humanitarian efforts fully committed and without fear.
22 Sep 2023 | Afghanistan, Africa, Awards, China, Fellowship 2023, Russia
Meet the activists and campaigners who have had a marked impact in fighting censorship and promoting freedom of expression
