The war in Ukraine rages on. At the same time, men in Russia and Belarus have found an opportunity for freedom in their own countries in this war. Hundreds of them are already fighting alongside the Ukrainians. More than 1000 are waiting to be trained and deployed.
By Heiko Roloff
Their goal: they want to overthrow the dictators in Moscow and Minsk. They want to end the rule of Vladimir Putin (69) and his closest ally Alexander Lukashenko (67) in order to give democracy a new chance in their home countries.
One of these men is Pavel Kulazhanka (36).
“Without an independent Ukraine, there will be no independent Belarus,” he said in an interview with the US Wall Street Journal. In the direction of Putin and Lukashenko he added menacingly: “Ukraine is my first stop. The second stop will be Belarus.”
Kulazhanka has been a member of the Kastus Kalinouski Battalion for several weeks. The unit is led by Belarusians and named after the leader of the 1863 uprising against Tsarist Russia in present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.
It has around 200 members so far, ranging from activists and bloggers with no combat experience to veterans who fought against Putin’s mercenaries in Ukraine’s Donbass region in 2014-2015.
And: The battalion fought in Kyiv in the current war and helped defend the Ukrainian capital against Russian invaders and thwart a conquest.
Another Belarusian unit is called “Pahonia” (after the former national coat of arms of Belarus). Two other, as yet unnamed, units are fighting in Odessa and Lutsk. In addition, Belarusian activists have sabotaged one-way lines set up by Putin to bring troops and supplies to Kyiv.
Franak Viacorka (34), an adviser to opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya (39), who rose up against Lukashenko in 2020 and now lives in exile in Lithuania, explains why so many of his compatriots are risking their lives in Ukraine: “The very existence of Belarus is in danger right now. When Putin claims that Ukraine has no right to be an independent state, he also means Belarus.”
Viacorka continued: “The Belarusians who are fighting alongside the Ukrainian military today will form the new army at home when Lukashenko’s regime has collapsed.”
Appropriately, the US special representative in Minsk, Julie Fischer, explains: “Unlike in Russia, the vast majority of people in Belarus are against Putin’s war in Ukraine.”
Another unit of foreign fighters in Ukraine, meanwhile, calls itself “Freedom for Russia”. Its members include former Russian prisoners of war who have switched sides. She is supported by prominent opposition figures in Moscow.
“The presence of Russian soldiers will help defend Ukraine and prevent further atrocities. This will later help to heal the wounds between the two peoples,” says one of these oppositionists under the guise of anonymity to the “Journal”.
White-blue-white patches are sewn onto the uniforms of Russian soldiers fighting their compatriots. The colors of a new Russian flag favored by anti-Putin opponents.
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Meanwhile, three Russian soldiers, who originally went to Ukraine for the Kremlin regime and have since defected, gave a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday. They talked about their motives.
“We have been tricked into this war,” said a former sergeant in an elite Russian unit. About his new “Legion” he said: “It was created to fight against Putin’s regime.”
Ilya Ponomarev, 46, a former Russian opposition politician who voted against the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and now lives in Kyiv, compares the defectors to Germans who fought the Nazi regime in World War II. He cited ex-Chancellor Willy Brandt as an example, who had fought Hitler’s soldiers in Norway.
“I know that many thousands of people in Russia would like to join the fight against Putin’s army. They shy away from killing Russians. But they want to kill Putinists who are just as fascists as they were in Germany 80 years ago.”
