Belarus turns a story of love and protest into a story of betrayal

When Belarusian dictator Aleksandr G. Lukashenko sent a MIG fighter jet to intercept a Ryanair passenger plane carrying an exiled anti-government activist and his girlfriend two years ago, he turned the young dissident into a martyr of the struggle for democracy.

The plane, flying from Greece to Lithuania, was forced to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, after authorities there falsely claimed a bomb was on board. The episode sparked international outrage and spotlighted Belarusian activist Roman Protasevich, now 28, and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 25.

This week, Mr. Lukashenko wrote the script, turning a story of democratic enthusiasm and young love thwarted by tyranny into a dark tale of political and romantic betrayal.

Mr Protasevich was arrested along with Ms Sapega at Minsk airport in May 2021 and received a rare pardon on Monday from a government not known for its mercy. a video released by the state media showed him standing in a leafy park giving thanks for the “wonderful news” and declaring himself “insanely grateful” to Mr. Lukashenko, whom he once compared to Hitler.

He had previously dumped Ms. Sapega to marry another woman, and posted a photo online last year of him kissing his unknown new bride. How he met her while still in the grip of a Belarusian security apparatus that keeps many of its prisoners in solitary confinement has never been explained.

With everything Mr. Protasevich has said or done publicly since his arrest two years ago, filtered through the Belarusian state media and scrutinized by security officials, it cannot be determined with certainty whether he has really changed sides. Nor, if he did, what pressure he was under during his detention from a regime that has long tortured political prisoners.

But there is broad consensus among fellow opposition activists that Mr Protasevich has turned against them.

“Please don’t praise him as a freedom fighter. He is a very dark figure in this whole story,” Andrei Sannikov, an exiled opposition leader, said by phone. “We never want to hear his name again. He betrayed his girlfriend. He has betrayed his friends and colleagues. He has betrayed the entire democratic movement.”

Franak Viacorka, the chief of staff of exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, accused Mr Protasevich of obtaining a pardon by collaborating with Belarus’ fearsome secret police agency, which stuck to its Soviet-era name, the KGB.

Mr. Protasevich’s transition from tortured pro-democracy hero to widely reviled collaborator is “a very important story that teaches us how brutal regimes like Lukashenko’s are,” Viacorka said in a statement to The New York Times.

“We don’t know what torture they used against him. We saw him on TV – he had just been destroyed. He looked very miserable, sick, beaten and he shouldn’t have been there.”

Before his arrest, Mr. Protasevich worked from exile in Lithuania and Poland as the editor of Nexta, a channel on the Telegram messaging app that was instrumental in organizing massive street protests that swept through Belarus in 2020 after Mr. Lukashenko claimed a unbelievable landslide victory, his sixth, in a presidential election widely regarded as rigged.

Facing a possible death sentence for treason, Mr Protasevich quickly dropped his anti-Lukashenko zeal following his 2021 arrest.

Appearing on Belarusian state television in June of that year with bruises on his wrists and what appeared to be a bruise on his head, he confessed to organizing anti-government protests and insisted on a “neutral stance” towards the Mr Lukashenko. His family, supporters and Western officials said at the time that he made the remarks under duress.

Mr Viacorka said this week that while he felt some sympathy for Mr Protasevich, “I don’t know if I will be able to forgive him” because “if you cooperate, you endanger dozens or maybe hundreds of people.”

But he warned against judging Mr. Protasevich too harshly. “I don’t know how I would personally behave in such a situation,” he said, “we have to be very careful when we judge the behavior of any person.”

Doubts about Mr Protasevich have been growing for months, especially since news broke last year that he had been released from a grim remand center and placed on house arrest, while Ms Sapega, his girlfriend, had been given a six-year prison sentence.

In a cold response to Ms Sapega’s prison sentence in May 2022, Mr Protasevich appeared to throw his former partner under the bus, stating in a blog post that she was “convicted for her real activities and not for being in a relationship with me.” Six years in prison, he said, was “far from the most terrible punishment possible.”

Anyway, he added, he had already split with Mrs. Sapega and married an unnamed local woman. He posted a color photo of himself with his new bride, who wore a bright yellow dress. Her face was blurred to disguise her identity. She held a bouquet of pink roses.

While Ms Sapega has been held incommunicado since the Ryanair plane landed in Minsk in 2021, Mr Protasevich has been allowed to speak publicly at regular intervals, usually at tightly scripted events in Minsk in front of security officials, and through state news . media.

In June last year, shortly after Ms Sapega’s capture, he told Belta, the official news agency, that detention in Belarus was now “the safest place for me” because “many people consider me a traitor”, although he has denied betraying one of his former colleagues.

Belta said he “made an informed decision to cooperate with the investigation.”

Family and friends said Mr Protasevich’s early appearances in Minsk suggested he was beaten. But he later appeared in public looking relaxed and unharmed. He took an increasingly pro-government tone as he abandoned his views and began to criticize Mr. Lukashenko.

A Belarusian court sentenced Mr Protasevich to eight years in prison in May for crimes including acts of terrorism and insulting the president, but the pardon announced Monday suggested he would not spend any more time behind bars.

Sergei Bespalov, a Belarusian opposition activist and blogger, claimed after Mr Protasevich’s conviction in May that “dozens of people have been imprisoned for his actions”. He added a video: “He just gave them up.”

Mr. Sannikov, the leader of the European Belarus Civil Campaign, an opposition organization led from Poland, and a former political prisoner in Mr. Lukashenko’s prisons, said that the relatively lenient treatment of Mr. Protasevich compared to that of his former girlfriend had confirmed the suspicions. long held by some opposition activists.

“He was a stooge from the start,” said Mr. Sannikov. “We never trusted him. I told friends not to do business with him.”

Nexta, the opposition’s Telegram channel, Mr. Protasevich edited, he said, often giving “mixed directions” to protesters in Minsk and “making people run aimlessly around the city”. Nexta also published demonstrably false information that Belarusian authorities exploited to try and discredit the opposition.

Exiled political groups often fall into power struggles and mutual finger-pointing, a phenomenon that Mr. Lukashenko has encouraged by sending agents to infiltrate and disrupt the activities of opponents outside Belarus. His critics in the country have almost all been arrested and given harsh sentences.

Maria Kolesnikova, a fierce opponent of Mr Lukashenko who refused to go into exile, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in September 2021 after a closed trial. The crackdown on dissent continued this year as Ales Bialiatski, 60, a veteran activist who shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, was given a 10-year prison sentence.

Mr Protasevich’s pardon, Mr Viacorka said, is part of a long and dirty game by the Belarusian authorities to crush the opposition – through brute force at home and more devious methods in the country. abroad. According to Viasna, a group monitoring repression in Belarus, the country currently holds 1,525 political prisoners.

“In Lukashenko’s eyes, Roman became loyal, obedient, and he wanted every political prisoner to behave like Roman,” said Mr. Viacorka, “In short, Roman humiliated himself in public and this is what Lukashenko wanted” opposition figures such as Mrs. Tikhanovskaya.

For Mr. Sannikov, however, the whole episode holds another lesson: “There are a lot of people being praised who fell short of expectations. Don’t create heroes. Just be a decent person.”

Thomas Dapkus contributed reporting from Vilnius, Lithuania.