A show trial carries with it a noxious whiff of Soviet times and in the case of Belarus, a country trapped by its past, the allusion is wholly appropriate. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, elected president in 2020 in a contest stolen by Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, was accused of treason by a court in Minsk last week. Her trial is a sham and a farce. The opposition leader is one among countless victims of an illegitimate rogue regime that oppresses its people and threatens the security of Europe.
Lukashenko, in power since 1994, has long been notorious for his authoritarian rule. But the situation has steadily deteriorated since the huge pro-democracy protests three years ago that nearly brought him down. Belarus now holds about 1,500 political prisoners. Tsikhanouskaya is not among them; she is being tried in absentia. But many others are less fortunate, including her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, whom she replaced as opposition leader after his arrest. He was later jailed for 18 years.
The regime also put the veteran rights activist and 2022 Nobel peace prize winner, Ales Bialiatski, on trial this month on trumped-up charges. Bialiatski, detained since 2021, shared the Nobel with two human rights groups – the Russian organisation Memorial, banned by Vladimir Putin, and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties. In jail, and suffering health problems, is another leading pro-democracy activist, Maria Kolesnikova, who famously tore up her passport at the border to prevent her expulsion in 2020.
Independent media battling regime propaganda have been particular victims of Lukashenko’s crackdown. The television journalist Katerina Bakhvalova was arrested with a colleague, Daria Chultsova, while filming an anti-regime rally in 2020 and held in a penal colony for two years for “violating public order”. Last year, Bakhvalova was handed an additional eight years for “state treason”. Yekaterina Yanshina, a Russian journalist, was jailed this month for “hooliganism” while reporting Bialiatski’s trial.
Reacting to Tsikhanouskaya’s case and the “continued repression” of opposition and civil society figures, the US imposed new sanctions last week, bringing to 322 the number of regime officials under visa restrictions. A range of European and UK measures is already in force. Yet Tsikhanouskaya argues that sanctions, which mostly relate to regime support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, should go further and deeper – specifically to weaken Lukashenko.
It’s undoubtedly true the plight of Belarusians is overshadowed and to some extent obscured by Ukraine, as was demonstrated again last week by the huge attention paid to deadlocked Nato crisis talks over supplying German tanks to Kyiv. Yet, in practice, the two are inextricably linked. “Lukashenko would not have survived the uprising that followed the stolen 2020 elections if it wasn’t for Putin,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote recently. “Lukashenko’s unpopular backing of Putin’s war should hasten the beginning of his end.”
Reported Russian plans to use Belarusian bases to launch a spring offensive in northern Ukraine, Putin’s visit to Minsk in December, talk of Russian nuclear weapons deployments, joint threats targeting Nato neighbours and combined military drills this month indicate how toxic this relationship is. But Lukashenko remains very much the junior partner, and to some degree an unwilling one. It’s thought he would be reluctant to order Belarus’s armed forces into action in Ukraine for fear of sparking a mutiny and another popular uprising.
Directly involved in the fighting or not, Belarus requires greater attention. Lukashenko’s odious regime plainly poses a continuing threat to western security as well as its own citizens. It’s another reason to defeat Russia. Vanquish Putin and it’s a good bet his thuggish vassal will fall, too.
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