Freed Belarusian dissident Maria Kalesnikava called on European governments yesterday to enter into dialogue with President Alexander Lukashenko, saying that failing to engage with him would only strengthen Russian influence in Belarus.
Kalesnikava was released and expelled from the country in December, after serving more than five years in prison for leading protests that Lukashenko suppressed following the disputed 2020 elections.
Now it has joined the debate over whether Europe should open talks with the longtime authoritarian leader, as the United States did last year, or continue to shun him over his human rights record and support for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the war in Ukraine.
"Belarusians need to feel that they are part of Europe... The more Belarus is cut off from Europe, the more structurally tied it is to Moscow," Kalesnikava said at an online event organized in London by the Chatham House organization.
"If Europe wants a stable and secure eastern neighborhood, it cannot afford to retreat," she added.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Byalyatski, also released from prison in December, said at the same event that he was, however, skeptical about Lukashenko's willingness to reform the authoritarian system he has built since coming to power in 1994.
"Right now, Belarus looks like a scorched earth," Byalyatski said, alluding to the atmosphere of political repression and the country's economic dependence on Russia and China.
"Society is like a pressure cooker, with the lid tightly screwed on with all the screws."
Byaljatski assessed that Lukashenko's decision to enter into talks with the US was a tactical move, conditioned by the weakness of the economy.
"Regimes like Lukashenko's only understand the language of force," he said.
Byalyatski and Kalesnikava were among 123 prisoners released by Lukashenko in December after talks with an envoy from US President Donald Trump. In return, Washington lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash, a key export, while EU sanctions remain in place.
Lukashenko's critics argue that the agreement is part of a decades-long pattern in which the government trades imprisoned opponents for Western concessions, giving little in return.
However, Kalesnikava said that it was precisely thanks to the previous warming of relations with the West from 2016 to 2019 that Belarusians were able to sense the possibility of a democratic future in Europe and that in 2020 they took to the streets trying to make it happen.
The former professional flutist assessed that issuing visas to ordinary Belarusians, as well as resuming educational, cultural and professional exchanges, would help rekindle those hopes.
Otherwise, she warned, the West would miss an opportunity when Lukashenko, 71, leaves the political scene. “If the West is absent then, it will lose influence on the outcome,” she said.
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