Said RFE/RL President and CEO Jamie Fly, “We strongly condemn this illegitimate persecution of an innocent journalist. His only ‘crime’ was reporting the truth to Belarusians who are now denied that truth by their government. We call for Aleh’s immediate release.”
An award-winning journalist, Hruzdzilovich was arrested on December 23, 2021, and was tried on March 2 for taking part in mass protests against the 2020 presidential election. Hruzdzilovich has consistently rejected the charges, stating he was working as an RFE/RL correspondent with Foreign Ministry accreditation at an August 2020 protest, and covered two other protests in October 2020 on assignment for his employer, the local newspaper Narodnaya Volya. The 63-year old previously served a 10-day sentence in July 2021 and a 15-day sentence in November 2020 for reporting on the protests, which followed the August 2020 presidential election that controversially returned longtime incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka to office for a sixth term. In January, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service published some of Hruzdzilovich’s letters from prison.
Hruzdzilovich is one of three former RFE/RL journalists imprisoned in Belarus. All three have been recognized by the Belarusian Human Rights Centre “Viasna” as political prisoners.
Ihar Losik, a consultant for RFE/RL and prominent blogger, was arrested on June 25, 2020, and tried on charges including “organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order” and “preparation for participation in riots.” The five-month, closed-door proceeding resulted, on December 14, 2021, in Losik’s conviction and sentencing to 15 years in prison; his five co-defendants also received harsh sentences of between 14 and 18 years, on charges widely considered to have been fabricated by Belarusian authorities. Fly condemned the trial as an “outrageous travesty of justice.”
In December 2021 Belarus’s Interior Ministry added RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, Radio Svaboda, to its registry of extremist organizations in a continued clampdown on independent media and civil society. The move means that Belarusians who subscribe to Radio Svaboda online could face up to six years in prison. The Belarus Service’s website has been blocked within Belarus since August 21, 2020, while the accreditations of all locally based journalists working for foreign media, including RFE/RL, were annulled by the Belarusian authorities in October 2020.
About RFE/RL
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, television, and mobile — reach influential audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.
The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank said it will suspend business related to Russia and Belarus, which have been hit with massive international sanctions over the Ukraine war.
In a statement issued Thursday, the AIIB said that “in the best interests of the bank, management has decided that all activities relating to Russia and Belarus are on hold and under review.”
The bank added that it was “actively monitoring the situation” in Ukraine and that management would do the “utmost to safeguard the financial integrity of AIIB.”
The multilateral financial institution, a brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was launched in 2016 to counter the West’s dominance of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Russia is among the AIIB’s founding members and holds around a 6% vote in its operations. It also has a seat on the bank’s board of directors.
It is the third-biggest stakeholder behind China, which holds almost 27% of voting power, and India.
Disclosures on the AIIB website show it has so far approved two Russia projects with financing of $800 million.
Only a small portion of its loan portfolio is in Russia.
Two projects for Belarus have also been proposed, in the fields of public health and transport.
“AIIB stands ready to extend financing flexibly and quickly and support members who have been adversely impacted by the war,” the bank said, without giving further details.
While Russia and Belarus are members of the bank, Ukraine is not.
While majority of governments have reacted to Russia’s invasion with sanctions, Beijing, which has close ties with the Kremlin, has taken a cautious line over the invasion, neither condemning it nor voicing outright support.
Financial institutions and businesses around the world are scrambling to distance themselves from Russia and Belarus over the conflict.
The Shanghai-based New Development Bank, established around the same time and for similar reasons as AIIB, also said it has “put new transactions in Russia on hold.”
The White House announced new sanctions Wednesday on Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions, which target the defense and oil sectors, will “severely limit the ability of Russia and Belarus to obtain the materials they need to support their military aggression against Ukraine, project power in ways that threaten regional stability, and undermine global peace and security,” the White House said.
The new sanctions also will target entities associated with Russian and Belarusian militaries that make combat aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, electronic warfare systems, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles for Russia’s military.
“The United States will take actions to hold Belarus accountable for enabling [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, weaken the Russian defense sector and its military power for years to come, target Russia’s most important sources of wealth, and ban Russian airlines from U.S. airspace,” the White House said.
Additionally, the U.S. and its allies are seeking to restrict “technology exports” in the oil industry, hoping to degrade “Russia’s status as a leading energy supplier over time.”
“The United States and our allies and partners do not have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy — which is why we have carved out energy payments from our financial sanctions,” the White House said.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
Russia on Sunday extended its military drills in Belarus, along Ukraine’s northern border, after two days of sustained shelling in eastern Ukraine between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces.
The Russian exercises with Belarusian forces had been scheduled to end Sunday. They were extended amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s show of force along the Ukrainian border with the massing of some 150,000 troops, accompanied by naval exercises in the Black Sea to the south of Ukraine.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the sharp increase in Russian troop deployments in recent weeks, cyberattacks on the Ukrainian defense ministry and major banks last week and now the new outbreak in fighting in eastern Ukraine that killed two Ukrainian soldiers, signal that Moscow is “following its playbook” ahead of large-scale warfare.
“Everything leading up to the invasion is already taking place,” Blinken said.
The separatists in eastern Ukraine have claimed that Kyiv’s forces are planning an attack there, which Ukraine denies.
At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy questioned why the United States and its Western allies, who have vowed to impose swift and tough economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, are not already doing so.
Blinken said, “As soon as you impose them, you lose the deterrence” to try to prevent an invasion, and if the West were to announce specific sanctions it would impose, Russia “could plan against them.”
The top U.S. diplomat said, however, “Until the tanks are moving” and missiles launched, Western leaders will “try to do everything to reverse” Putin’s mind, “to get him off the course he’s decided.”
Asked whether Putin might be bluffing an invasion with his military buildup, Blinken said, “There’s always a chance.” But Blinken added, “He’s following the script to the letter on the brink of an invasion.”
Still, Blinken said he would meet with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Europe on Thursday for more negotiations, on condition that Moscow has not launched an invasion before then.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who said Friday he is “convinced” Putin plans to invade, is meeting Sunday with his National Security Council to discuss the latest developments.
The U.S. and its NATO allies fear that the Russian forces in Belarus could be deployed in an attack southward on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, while tens of thousands more troops could invade from the east and south into Ukraine.
Despite their belief that Putin has his mind made up to invade, Biden and other Western leaders are holding out hope for a settlement to the crisis, 11th hour diplomacy to avert the first massive warfare in Europe since the end of World War II.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said Sunday, “The big question remains: Does the Kremlin want dialogue?”
“We cannot forever offer an olive branch while Russia conducts missile tests and continues to amass troops,” Michel said at the Munich Security Conference. “One thing is certain: if there is further military aggression, we will react with massive (economic) sanctions.”
Some of the Western allies, including the U.S., have shipped arms to Ukraine, but none of its leaders is planning to deploy troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces in the event of an invasion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday the United Kingdom will use the “toughest possible” economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine.
Johnson told the BBC the sanctions would not only target Putin and his associates, “but also all companies and organizations with strategic importance to Russia.”
The British leader said, “We are going to stop Russian companies raising money on U.K. markets, and we are even with our American friends going to stop them trading in pounds and dollars.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had a telephone conversation with Putin Sunday, with Macron’s office saying afterward that the two leaders agreed on the need to find a diplomatic solution.
The two countries’ foreign ministers will meet in the coming days to work on a possible summit involving Russia, Ukraine and allies to establish a new security order in Europe.
Western allies say they are willing to discuss their missile positioning and military exercises in Europe but have balked at Putin’s demand to rule out possible NATO membership for Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
“We need to stop Putin because he will not stop at Ukraine,” Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in an interview Sunday in The Daily Mail about Putin’s apparently imminent invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin has said all this publicly, that he wants to create the Greater Russia, that he wants to go back to the situation as it was before where Russia had control over huge swaths of eastern Europe.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union’s executive commission, said, “The Kremlin’s dangerous thinking, which comes straight out of a dark past, may cost Russia a prosperous future.”
She said if Russia invades Ukraine, Moscow would have limited access to financial markets and tech goods, according to the sanctions package being prepared.
Russia sent two long-range, nuclear-capable bombers to patrol over western Belarus, Russia’s ally and Ukraine’s neighbor to the north, as the first U.S. troops arrived in Poland.
The Russian Tu-22M3 bombers were accompanied by Su-30SM fighter jets from the Russian and Belarusian air forces and trained for four hours in the third mission of its kind in the last month.
Belarus has grown increasingly close to Russia since the West imposed sanctions on the country following the 2020 elections, which were widely seen as fraudulent, and the subsequent crackdown on peaceful protesters.
On Saturday, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko praised the Russian-led security alliance, saying it showed its ability to deploy quickly when it sent troops to Kazakhstan last month to put down fuel price protests that had turned violent.
“While they [NATO] will be still getting prepared to send some troops here, we will already stand at the English Channel, and they know it,” he said in a reference to Western allies, in an interview on Russian state TV.
Lukashenko, however, downplayed the threat of war in Ukraine, saying, “there is no one there to fight us.”
Next week, two prominent European leaders are scheduled to travel to the capitals of Russia and Ukraine for talks with their counterparts about diplomatic measures to ease the growing tensions surrounding Moscow’s potential invasion of Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron is due in Moscow on Monday and Kyiv on Tuesday. The following week, Germany’s Olaf Scholz is set to visit Kyiv on Feb. 14 and Moscow on Feb. 15.
Macron spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and NATO head Jens Stoltenberg on Saturday. In separate conversations each agreed with Macron for the need “to continue working to find through dialogue a path to de-escalation” and that NATO must remain “united in the face of Russian aggression.”
“As announced, the first elements of the brigade battle group from the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army have arrived in Poland,” a Polish military spokesperson said.
The U.S. troops arrived at Rzeszow military base in southeastern Poland, near its border with Ukraine, after U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered the deployment of 1,700 soldiers there. About 4,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in Poland on a rotational basis since 2017.
Biden also ordered troops to Romania and Germany, raising the total number of additional troops to nearly 3,000.
U.S. Army sources have previously said that about 1,700 U.S. service members, primarily from the 82nd Airborne Division, would deploy from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland “over the next days.”
The first contingent of additional U.S. troops arrived in Germany on Friday.
U.S. troops from the 18th Airborne Corps arrived Friday in Wiesbaden, Germany, according to the U.S. military’s European Command, which added they would establish a headquarters in Germany to support 1,700 paratroopers who have been ordered to deploy to Poland.
The U.S. placed 8,500 other U.S. troops on high alert in January to deploy to Europe if necessary. They remain on high alert and NATO defense ministers are expected to discuss adding more reinforcements at their next meeting on Feb. 16-17.
According to a New York Times report, while Russia’s troops massed along the border are not ready to launch a total invasion of Ukraine, sections of its army “appear to be in the final stages of readiness for military action should the Kremlin order it.”
Moscow has dispatched an additional 10,000 troops to the region, the Times said, in addition to the thousands of troops already deployed to the area.
Some information for this report was provided by RFE/RL, The Associated Press and Reuters.
Speaking to VOA from his New York apartment, Dmitry Savchenko, 34, recalls the prosperous life he recently left behind.
“In Belarus, we had everything. My wife had several cafes. I had two businesses myself, some real estate, an apartment, a car,” he said.
Savchenko and his family had never intended to leave their home. But in the last few months, for him and many other Belarussian citizens, what was once unthinkable became a dire necessity.
“We were faced with a dilemma: either go to prison or run and hide in another country,” he said.
Long described as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” Belarus has been run for 27 years by Alexander Lukashenko. But in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, there was a sense among his opponents that he was politically vulnerable.
FILE – Belarus’ security service agents and riot police officers detain an opposition supporter in Minsk on July 14, 2020, after the country’s central electoral commission refused to register the main rivals to President Alexander Lukashenko as candidates for the country’s presidential election in August.
Savchenko says he has been apolitical his entire life, but in those months he, like many others, was “smelling change in the air,” inspired by the caliber and diversity of presidential candidates eager to challenge Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule.
Two months before election day, August 9, the hopeful Belarusian entrepreneur registered as an independent observer for the polls.
But Savchenko was setting himself up for a major disappointment.
On the day of the vote, Savchenko chronicled numerous irregularities in his precinct, which reached their climax with the members of the elections committee — which normally consist of regime loyalists — not letting the independent observers monitor the process in person. The elections committee members then fled the building with the ballots through the backdoor, escorted by the local police, Savchenko says.
FILE – Belarusian law enforcement officers stand guard during a rally of opposition supporters following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 10, 2020.
Hearing hundreds of stories like Savchenko’s from friends and family — as well as from independent media — ordinary Belarusians took to the streets. The country saw a rise of civic awareness unprecedented in its history. In Minsk alone, about 200,000 people came out for a peaceful protest on one of the post-election weekends.
And then the violence began.
Trying to drown people’s enthusiasm, Lukashenko, who baselessly claimed victory with more than 80% of the vote, unleashed a wave of repression and violence against the protesters. Video and photo evidence of police brutality, as well as of demonstrators’ mutilated bodies, made headlines around the world.
“Some of my friends participated in those protests,” Savchenko said. “It was heart-wrenching to even look at them (after their release from jail).”
Those who appeared to have suffered the most were those sent to the infamous Okrestina detention center in the country’s capital where, according to numerous detainee accounts, they were beaten and tortured for hours and not given food or water for days.
“Photos of the people who were released from the Okrestina detention center looked like the photos of people who came from war,” Savchenko added. “And I denounce that. Because people came out (to protest) unarmed.”
FILE – People detained during rallies of opposition supporters, who accuse Alexander Lukashenko of falsifying the polls in the presidential election, show bruises as they leave the Okrestina prison in Minsk, Aug. 14, 2020.
Savchenko says he is determined to punish those who so flagrantly abused the law.
“I am gathering proof of falsifications of the election results, abuse of police authority. And I decided that I will bring them to justice no matter where I am,” he said.
He sent the incriminating evidence he had gathered to BYPOL, an independent union of Belarusian ex-security officers whose mission is to keep a registry of crimes committed by the Lukashenko regime.
The state’s crackdown drew international condemnation, but Savchenko says that did not stop the authorities from methodically targeting their critics after the elections.
“At first, the authorities cracked down on most vocal protesters, then on independent media. After that they started laying off state officials who — how should I put it — didn’t vote for ‘the right candidate.’ Slowly but surely, they got to the people who were election observers,” he said.
For days, he was harassed and intimidated, then detained and beaten by the police. The authorities threatened to send his 5-year-old son to an orphanage.
So he and his family ran. First to Moscow, then all the way to Mexico City, then to Tijuana, then to the United States, where they are seeking political asylum.
Washington-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Krukova specializes in providing legal help to asylum-seekers from the countries of the former Soviet Union. She says there are many others like the Savchenko family.
“We’ve seen a number of these cases and a big increase in the number of cases coming from Belarus specifically,” she said.
FILE – Demonstrators paste photos of opposition supporters killed during the post-election protests on the Okrestina prison wall during a rally demanding to free jailed activists of the opposition in Minsk, Oct. 4, 2020.
VOA spoke with several Belarusian asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from the southern border following the post-election crackdown. They all spoke of intimidation, detainment and beatings by police back home.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows a steady increase in the number of encounters of Belarusian migrants by the southwest border CBP officers — from three in October 2020 to 123 in September 2021.
Savchenko says the main reason his family chose to travel to the U.S. instead of Europe is safety.
“There is a network of Russian and Belarusian agents that are active in the countries neighboring Belarus, as well as in some EU states,” he said.
FILE – A Belarusian dog handler checks luggage off a Ryanair airplane parked on Minsk international airport’s apron in Minsk, May 23, 2021.
Belarusian officials demonstrated their relentless pursuit of critics when they forced a civilian Ryanair flight to land in Minsk last year and arrested an opposition blogger, Roman Protasevich. Another exiled Belarusian activist, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a park near his home in Kyiv, an unsolved case widely seen as the work of Minsk’s clandestine services.
John Sipher, the former CIA deputy chief of station in Europe, still views Europe as relatively safe but says the fears of dissidents are not groundless.
He says horror stories of kidnappings and murders spread among dissidents “like wildfires.”
“If there are a few cases where Belarusians are hunted down or arrested, or brought back to Minsk, then it becomes a story that makes its way around that community,” Sipher said.
With Russian troops now massing in Belarus and more on the border of Ukraine, experts see the region’s authoritarian leaders becoming more collaborative, putting their critics at greater risk.
“Since Lukashenko’s crackdown in the last year or so, he is going to be looking for more opportunities to assist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Putin is going to be looking for means to work with Belarusians on these issues,” Sipher said.
Experts say whether an activist is in danger depends on how high their name is on the Belarusian KGB’s priorities list. But it’s a guessing game no one on the list wants to play.
The continuing crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus has spurred a wave of political asylum seekers. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka spoke with some who undertook a long and uncertain journey to Mexico and on to the United States in recent months. Some of them say they had no other choice because they no longer feel safe even in the European Union. Camera: Aaron Fedor
Said Fly, “We condemn the Belarusian government’s campaign to criminalize honest journalism and deprive the Belarusian people of the truth. We again adamantly reject this ridiculous, regime-imposed label—Radio Svaboda is not an ‘extremist organization.’ Aleh Hruzdzilovich and Andrey Kuznechyk are hostages taken by this lawless regime, not criminals. Factual reporting is not an ‘extremist’ activity, and journalism is not a crime.”
Authorities in Belarus have declared over 300 Telegram channels and communities “extremist”—from local chats to channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers—making anyone who publishes or reposts “extremist” materials liable for up to seven years in prison. According to RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, seven of the 10 most-popular Belarusian telegram channels have been declared “extremist.”
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, television, and mobile — reach influential audiences in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through USAGM.
