Yan Melnikau planned to spend a week in Ukraine when he arrived here in January 2014, but he has not gone home to Belarus since.
A month after he joined the pro-democracy Maidan revolution in Kyiv, dozens of protesters were shot dead, Ukraine’s then president Viktor Yanukovich fled to Moscow, and then the Kremlin reacted to the country’s westward tilt by annexing Crimea and sending arms and fighters into its eastern Donbas area.
More than a decade on, Ukraine is heading into a third winter of all-out war with Russia and Melnikau (31) is now an experienced member of the Kastus Kalinouski regiment, a unit of Belarusian volunteers who see an inextricable link between the fates of Ukraine and their homeland.
“We understand that without a free Ukraine there will be no free Belarus. We are here to help Ukraine, and later will come the liberation of Belarus,” Melnikau says.
“Belarusians and Ukrainians are very close, culturally and linguistically ... We have shared borders and history. And we have a common enemy. For centuries Russia tried to steal our land and repress our culture. So let’s fight the common enemy together.”
Melnikau was a year old when Alexander Lukashenko came to power in Belarus, and the former collective farm boss now leads a brutal authoritarian regime that is propped up by Moscow and serves as a launch pad for Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Russian security and financial support helped Lukashenko survive massive opposition protests against rigged elections in 2020, which ended with a police crackdown in which several people were killed, hundreds hurt and thousands arrested.
“Lots of Belarusians left the country after the 2020 protests and many emigrated to Ukraine ... After what they had lived through in Belarus – when people were killed and raped and jailed by the security forces – they didn’t expect something even worse to happen here,” says another member of the Kalinouski regiment who uses the call-sign Ernest.
He says about 1,000 Belarusians are now fighting for Ukraine, most of them with the Kalinouski regiment, and that Belarusians are probably the largest contingent of foreign volunteers in the Ukrainian armed forces. The regiment is named after a Belarusian writer and activist who was one of the leaders of an 1863 uprising against Russian rule.
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“Most volunteers joined us after the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. They saw what [atrocities] happened in places like Irpin and Bucha, or saw warplanes and missiles flying over their heads towards Ukraine. So they sent their wives and girlfriends to Poland and came to fight,” Ernest says.
“Many were already living in Europe. But those who were in Belarus walked to Ukraine through the forest or swam or took a boat across. Much of the border area is unmarked marshland, so it was possible to cross unnoticed. But it was risky.”
Belarusian courts now imprison people for months or a few years simply for liking or reposting online criticism of Lukashenko or support for Ukraine. Belarusian rights group Viasna said earlier this year that 13 people had been sentenced to a combined total of 199.5 years in jail for sabotaging railway infrastructure to hamper attacks on Ukraine, and a woman was jailed for six years for donating to the Kalinouski regiment.
There are 1,290 political prisoners in Belarus, Viasna says, including 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, who was jailed for a decade last year; Maria Kolesnikova, one of three women who led opposition to Lukashenko in 2020; and Sergei Tikhanovsky, activist and husband of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whom the West regards as the real winner of the 2020 elections and now leads the opposition in exile.
“We have been declared a terrorist organisation in Belarus, so now just for subscribing to our social media channels you can be convicted of supporting terrorism,” Ernest says. “Repression is very strong there. People are living like coiled springs, waiting for something to change.”
Nevertheless, new volunteers do still join the Kalinouski regiment, usually by contacting it via Telegram, going through a vetting process and then entering Ukraine from Poland at a designated time and place.
“One guy who joined us said he imagined there were only some kind of berserkers or Vikings fighting here, and he was a manager and didn’t know what he would do,” Ernest says. “But we have lots of regular guys with no military experience, and we have lots of roles to fill – there are logistics and organisational jobs, it’s not just about being at the frontline with a rifle or machine gun.”
Yet the Kalinouski regiment and its forerunners have taken part in many of the hardest battles of the war – from Pisky and Savur-Mohyla in 2014 to Severodonetsk and Bakhmut during the full-scale invasion – and at least 53 Belarusians have died defending Ukraine.
The regiment has loose ties with Tikhanovskaya’s political opposition in exile, and in August she named one of its former members, Vadzim Kabanchuk, as her representative for defence and national security.
In a message to the regiment earlier this year, Tikhanovskaya said its fight “symbolises how love for freedom and the pursuit of justice unite people even in the most dreadful times”.
“I want you to know that for Belarusians, the Kastus Kalinouski regiment is much more than just a military unit,” she said. “You embody the courage and dignity of our people and prove that Belarusians are ready to take action – and even sacrifice their lives – to make a change.”
While Lukashenko (70) allows Russia’s military to attack Ukraine from Belarus, Ernest says he is unlikely to send Belarusian troops into war because it would weaken security at home and could even prompt a revolt and undermine his own regime.
“Maybe [the regime] will end through his own death. But then what will happen?” Ernest says. “We want to change the situation ourselves, but for that we need Ukraine to win. And I don’t mean some sort of ceasefire – it must be a full military victory over Russia. That would open up possibilities.”
Melnikau was repeatedly detained as a teenager for pro-opposition activism in Belarus, while the West tempered its response to Lukashenko’s deepening authoritarianism in the vain hope of drawing him out of Russia’s orbit.
“The West made mistakes with Lukashenko from the start,” Melnikau says. “Right from the 1990s, when he changed the constitution and opposition figures were killed.”
Three influential critics of Lukashenko – former Belarusian interior minister Yuri Zakharenko, ex-central election commission chief Viktor Gonchar and businessman Anatoly Krassovsky – vanished in 1999. Opponents of the regime say they were murdered, but Lukashenko has always denied involvement in their disappearance.
Ernest warns the West not to make another mistake by forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“It would be like the compromise with Hitler at Munich. Why don’t we learn from history?” he says. “The fate of the region is being decided in Ukraine. If we lose here then there will be consequences for Belarus and other countries of Europe.”
Ukrainians and Belarusians “have a very interconnected story”, Ernest says. “This [war] is our hope that we can change things. There is no other hope. I don’t think any other foreigners fighting for Ukraine are more motivated than us.”
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