Organize or fight? Three years in exile, Belarus opposition divided about path

[August 08, 2023]  By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

WARSAW (Reuters) - Pavel Maryeuski, 33, was an activist committed to peaceful politics who had never held a weapon, when he fled his native Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko's crackdown on protests following an election three years ago.

Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he felt the call to battle, and joined a Belarus volunteer unit fighting in support of Ukraine at the front.

"At first I thought about Ukraine, about Ukrainians and about protecting life," he told Reuters in Poland. "Then I thought about Belarus."

If Russia loses, there could be change in Belarus too. And his fellow veterans of the Ukraine conflict are bound to play a role in the fight for their own country.

"I see this as an opportunity for us Belarusians to return home."

On the third anniversary of the election her followers believe she won, Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, 40, has all the trappings of a leader in waiting: a cabinet in exile, diplomatic missions, regular meetings with Western dignitaries.

With nearly all the opposition now in jail or exile, that is no small feat. The opposition is diverse and diffuse, probably comprising a few thousand of the 100,000 people estimated to have fled the country in the past three years, with politics ranging from liberalism to nationalism.

UNITED BY ANGER

Many face lengthy sentences for criminal charges in absentia should they return to Belarus. Reuters spoke to more than 20 opposition figures to gauge their mood three year after the election that ignited the crackdown. Most see little path to a quick victory over a leader in power for nearly 30 years.

They are divided over tactics, but they are united by their anger at Lukashenko's continued rule, his jailing and torturing of thousands of opponents, and his close alliance with Russia which they say negates Belarus's sovereignty.

"We managed to maintain the unity of democratic forces and restructure them, that is, create new bodies and maintain cooperation between political actors and civic initiatives," Tsikhanouskaya told Reuters last week in a Zoom interview from Lithuania.

She still has hopes even of opening up dialogue one day with officials still serving the government in Minsk: "Perhaps some of them will have enough common sense, and will understand that Lukashenko is leading Belarus nowhere, that he is selling our sovereignty," she said.

Stanislava Glinnik, whose grandfather was Belarus's first post-Soviet head of state until he lost the last competitive election to Lukashenko in 1994, is now part of a body called the Coordination Council, a network for civil society groups.

Faces of Belarusian political prisoners are painted on a graffiti in Warsaw, Poland, July 25, 2023. REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki

"This is no longer opposition, it is a real government-in-exile," she told Reuters, sitting in Karma, a bar in Warsaw that used to be based in Minsk.

Opposition groups now maintain more than 20 alternative embassies, consulates or information centers for Belarusians abroad, and run at least two intelligence bodies seeking to influence events in Belarus.

Activists help Belarusians escape abroad, hackers are developing apps that allow safe communication within Belarus and some groups track the location of troops in the country.

But a small but growing number of activists, many with combat experience in Ukraine, say it is time to train for a real fight.

At a conference in Poland last week, some of the biggest applause went to a veteran of combat in Ukraine, Pavel Kuhta, who gave a fiery speech denouncing members of Tsikhanouskaya's exiled cabinet for failing to do enough to organize armed resistance.

Sergey Kedyshko, 47, who leads a group of around 200 Belarusian volunteers conducting combat training in Poland and Lithuania, agreed with the premise that the opposition needs to get more fighting fit.

"When some kind of military action takes place, when it is necessary to act very quickly and effectively, the Belarusian opposition always lags behind, so we are losing," he said.

Six weeks ago, there was a brief jolt of hope for the Belarus opposition, when Russia's Wagner mercenary group launched a mutiny inside Russia.

At the height of the uprising, with Wagner fighters bearing down on Moscow, Tsikhanouskaya tweeted that she was "establishing a United Operational Headquarters" to "coordinate our activities at this critical time".

With Lukashenko's Kremlin sponsors in jeopardy, he was suddenly weaker than ever, she said.

But within hours, Lukashenko himself helped bring an end to the Russian mutiny, negotiating for Wagner fighters to move to Belarus. Weeks later, hundreds of battle-hardened fighters arrived. The opposition's optimism swiftly fizzled.

Exactly what role the Wagner fighters will play in Belarus is anyone's guess, but for the opposition, nothing good can come of it, said Kedyshko.

"The situation is getting worse."

(Reporting by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Peter Graff)

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