Belarusian dissidents join Ukraine’s fight against Russia

For weeks, Vadim Prokopiev kept finding himself at military checkpoints with his hands above his head. Russia had just launched its invasion of Ukraine. Wartime paranoia had set in and Prokopiev, 50, rarely made a good first impression on suspicious Ukrainian soldiers.

He was travelling in a seven-car convoy of young men with military equipment. His passport was from Belarus, a Russian ally used as a launchpad for President Putin’s attacks. And when asked to say palianytsia, a Ukrainian word for a type of bread — a test to distinguish friend from foe — he tended to mispronounce it, as Russians also often do.

“It was pretty understandable, obviously they were expecting all kinds of trouble from Belarus,” said Prokopiev, a restaurateur, turned radical politician, turned soldier.

But he and his men were not saboteurs. Prokopiev came to Ukraine to fight Russia, and he has now formed a battalion of fellow Belarusian dissidents to battle the invaders.

“We’ve come here because we understand that Ukraine is bleeding for its own freedom, and we feel the moral obligation and duty to help them,” he said.

They have been sworn in as an official volunteer unit of Ukraine’s armed forces and these days, armed with the correct official paperwork, the checkpoints are no longer so suspicious.

Their country has effectively surrendered its sovereignty to the Russian military, which has used Belarus as a staging ground for waging war on their mutual neighbour.

Belarus’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, relied on Putin’s support to survive a wave of mass protests and strikes that followed a disputed presidential election two years ago this month. His fortunes remain tightly bound to the Kremlin.

Right at the start of the conflict he allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine from Belarus as part of a doomed assault on Kyiv. Since then hundreds of Russian missiles targeting Ukraine have been launched from Belarusian territory.

Last week Ukrainian officials warned of a heavy build-up of Russian missile systems just inside Belarus, including anti-aircraft weapons, at a location about 150 miles north of Kyiv. The Ukrainian air force also said that Russian fighter jets had fired missiles against the western region of Zhytomyr from Belarusian airspace.

However, in a possible acknowledgement of how unpopular the attack on Ukraine is among his compatriots, Lukashenko has kept Belarusian troops out of the war so far.

One poll in April by an independent Belarusian sociologist found that two-thirds of the country opposed the use of Belarusian infrastructure for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, while more than 50 per cent disapproved of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Only 11 per cent supported sending Belarusian troops into Ukraine.

Since the war began opponents of the government have committed acts of sabotage on railways inside Belarus to hamper Russia’s invasion logistics.

As a critic of Lukashenko, Prokopiev had fled Belarus before the war to Poland, fearing arrest. In Warsaw he set up a recruitment centre to funnel volunteer fighters into Ukraine. His battalion has attracted hundreds of members. They are not only foot soldiers: some are “special operatives”, cyber experts and paramedics.

Christened Pahonia, after a pre-Soviet national emblem of Belarus, the battalion has been sworn in as an official volunteer unit of Ukraine’s armed forces and, after months of training, has sent its first troops to the frontline and on missions in the Donbas, with others to follow.

The Pahonia soldiers dream of one day liberating their own land from Lukashenko’s dictatorial grip.

“I did my best to resolve this peacefully, using democratic methods. I didn’t succeed. These kinds of people, unfortunately, only understand force.” Prokopiev said. “First, we need enough Belarusian soldiers, well trained and battle-hardened. Second, we need to form a political leadership, to be part of a national liberation movement. Before we return to Belarus, we can create an alternative force powerful enough to reignite the hopes and energy of people inside the country and send a very strong signal to Lukashenko’s supporters: ‘You better cross the river, and join us’.”

Prokopiev’s recruits also believe that the war in Ukraine has made military action in their own country an unfortunate necessity.

 “For years, we wrote petitions and met with politicians,” said a 40-year-old lieutenant who had lived in exile for years and wished to be identified only as Mike, his codename. “But things got worse, not better — there are now more than 1,000 political prisoners in Belarus.” The “last straw”, he added, was Lukashenko’s support for the invasion of Ukraine.

Prokopiev and his soldiers partly blame Western leaders for allowing the situation to reach such an extreme, labelling their response to Putin’s tightening grip on Belarus and broader aggression in recent years as too little, too late.

 “The West’s policies of containment and appeasement created a monster,” Prokopiev said, citing examples such as the poisoning in Salisbury in 2018, when Russian intelligence agents tried to kill Sergei Skripal, a former spy for the UK, with a nerve agent, and the annexation of Crimea, which resulted, he complained, in little other than diplomatic slaps on the wrist.

“Unfortunately only this tragic war has made the West finally realise that Putin has to be dealt with. You need to dance with the devil now, and you can only win on the battlefield.”

The Pahonia fighters are not the only Belarusian soldiers on the battlefield. A second unit, the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, has already seen action on the front lines. There is also the Freedom of Russia legion, a volunteer unit of Russian dissidents.

On the front line near Izyum, one soldier’s codename — Kandalaksha — was a clue to his identity. Kandalaksha is a small town in northeastern Russia, chosen as the soldier’s nickname because it was where he was born.

Inspired by Alexei Navalny, the jailed Kremlin critic and opposition activist, Kandalaksha left his home country in 2014 to fight for Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.

Thanks to his prior residency in Ukraine, Kandalaksha is not part of the newly established Freedom of Russia legion, but a commander in the Ukrainian army’s 95th Air Assault Brigade.

When asked to explain why he was fighting his homeland, he replied: “The Kremlin’s Russia is a cancer on the planet and if you look at the majority of conflicts in the world you will find something leading to Russia.”

Away from the battlefield, other foreign activists have been spurred into action. Alina Korotkevich, a 43-year-old media professional fled Belarus for Ukraine in 2020, when peaceful protests against Lukashenko led to a violent wave of arrests in which several of her friends were jailed.

“The fate of Europe will be resolved in Ukraine, so I no longer think of going home,” she said. Instead, she spends her days in the western city of Lviv organising evacuation convoys and delivery of humanitarian and military aid. “I can be useful here, we have a common enemy so I have a new sense of purpose.”

This was a chance, she added, to repay the support Ukrainian activists have shown Belarusian political refugees over the years.

While the Pahonia fighters have been welcomed by their Ukrainian counterparts — except at the occasional checkpoint — some Belarusian volunteers have faced prejudice.

“Many people have in their minds the picture of bombs being sent from Belarus,” said Palina Brodik, co-ordinator of the Free Belarus Centre, which supports Belarus exiles in Ukraine. “But we are not the same as our country’s de facto regime,” she added. “Our job is to show solidarity with the Ukrainians.”