Prospective volunteer fighters say that in order to free their country from the grip of Russian President Vladimir Putin, it must first be defeated in Ukraine. The group, whose ages range from 19 to 60, carry Kalashnikov replicas. Almost no one has combat experience. Among them are a professional poker player, a rock musician and an electrician. They are led by dissidents and restaurateur Vadim Prokopiev. “We see a window of opportunity,” Prokopiev told CNN on Monday. “I called on Belarusians to take part in the battle for Ukraine, because that is the first step before the second step, which is the battle for Belarus.” Most of the members, including Prokopiev, were forced to flee the country in 2020 when Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko – a Kremlin-backed Putin ally – staged a mass protest after winning a wide-ranging election. . stigmatized by fraud. “If Ukraine loses this war, Belarus will have zero chance of being liberated,” Prokopiev said. “If Ukraine wins this war, it means that Putin’s hands are too busy and that he is too weak and will not support Lukashenko with resources.”
Pohonya wants to join the International Defense Legion of Ukraine, a military unit made up of foreign volunteers, but at the time of writing these lines have not yet been accepted. Hundreds of other Belarusian volunteers are already on the ground fighting alongside Ukrainian troops. Four have been killed since the start of the war, said Belarussian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. “The people of Belarus understand that the fate of Belarus depends on the fate of Ukraine, and now it’s very important that Ukraine be liberated so that we can get rid of Lukashenko’s regime in our territory,” Tikhanovskaya told CNN on Wednesday. Moscow is using Minsk as a satellite base for its unprovoked war against Ukraine. At the beginning of the conflict, Putin ordered troops to Ukraine through the Russian-Belarusian border. Belarus has been used as a springboard for many of Russia’s air operations in Ukraine, according to information gathered by NATO surveillance aircraft. And the Ukrainian army says it shot down several missiles fired at it from Belarus. After Russia failed to gain the territory it wanted around Kyiv, the forces retreated back to Belarus to regroup and redevelop. And NATO fears the Kremlin may even call on Lukashenko to deploy his army to bolster Moscow’s forces on the battlefield. It is a prospect that would see the Belarusian exiles and the Minsk army on opposite sides of the front line. The Biden government has punished Minsk with sanctions targeting Belarus’s defense companies, the country’s defense minister and has suspended normal trade relations with the country. But Lukashenko has not shown remorse for his role as an aide. “We did not start this war, our conscience is clear. I am glad it started,” he told reporters in March. Earlier this week, Putin thanked Lukashenko for his full support, saying: “We have never doubted that if anyone were to offer us a shoulder, it would be Belarus.”
Belarus’s resistance, broken and weak by the 2020 crackdown, has said that volunteer fighters are part of a broader effort to destabilize the Lukashenko regime. “All these Belarusian fighters are real heroes,” Tikhanovskaya said of the volunteers. “Now they are defending Ukraine and maybe one day they could defend Belarus as well,” he said, referring to the opposition’s desire to see Lukashenko’s regime overthrown. In Belarus, a railway line used by Russian forces to transport supplies to Ukraine was partially disrupted by activists in April when Belarusian police opened fire and arrested three men, calling it a terrorist act, according to the Belgian state news agency. And cyber-activists have recently cracked down on Belarussian state institutions involved in the war against Ukraine and continue to fight Russian misinformation on the Internet, Tikhanovskaya said. But these small measures have not yet posed a real threat to the 28-year rule of Lukashenko, often referred to as Europe’s last dictator. “A long journey starts somewhere, so we build a small force to build a bigger force,” Prokopiev said. The exiles now hope that Lukashenko’s dependence on Moscow connects his future with Putin and the result of what has so far been a faltering military invasion of Ukraine.