Iryna Shchasnaya: The President of My Country Promised to Drain the Swamp. He Never Left.

By адмін on 03/07/2025 • ( 0 )

New York Times, June 28, 2025

Iryna Shchasnaya, a former political prisoner in Belarus, with her son, Herman. “I’m still stuck in a psychological crisis,” she said. “The system is designed not just to break you inside prison, but after you leave too.”Credit…

Listen to this article · 3:00 min Learn more

Photographs and Text by Pasha Kritchko

Mr. Kritchko is a Belarusian photojournalist who lives in Poland.

June 28, 2025

I’m going to tell you how the people in charge of my country made the truth a crime.

Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s longtime president, has spent about three decades destroying our country’s fragile democratic institutions: elections, the judiciary, political opposition and independent media. Many critics have been imprisoned; others, fearful, have left the country or stayed but kept quiet; some have simply disappeared. In January, Mr. Lukashenko secured his seventh term in elections widely seen as a sham.

It didn’t have to be this way. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the U.S.S.R., there was a window in which my country could have democratized and moved closer to Europe and the West. Instead, the pro-Russia Mr. Lukashenko came to power in 1994 promising to drain the swamp. He never left.

An armored vehicle is surrounded by riot police. — Riot police patrolled Minsk, the capital, on the day of Mr. Lukashenko’s inauguration in September 2020 after his disputed election victory.

A woman sits in the back of a car with her hand on her heart. — Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition candidate in the 2020 election, before an election rally in Gomel, Belarus.

Riot police lined up in front of a large building, with a green and red flag just seen. — Riot police on Aug. 30, 2020. Huge protests were organized after Mr. Lukashenko was declared the winner of the election.

Belarusians tried to fight back. In the 2020 election, a stay-at-home mother, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, unexpectedly ran for president after her husband, a popular blogger, was arrested (he was only very recently released). When it was announced that Mr. Lukashenko would again be president, with official results awarding him more than 80 percent of the vote, there were massive protests.

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

In hindsight, 2020 was a turning point. The regime sensed the danger of the moment and the ensuing crackdown was violent and swift. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, a local human rights group estimates that there are more than 1,000 political prisoners, and, according to U.N. estimates, more than 300,000 people have left the country in the time since.

I am one of them. I had been a commercial photographer, mostly weddings, until 2020. But in 2020 I decided to start documenting the election campaign and, after the elections, the protests. I don’t think I missed a single major Sunday protest in 2020. By the end of that year there was the sense that things were closing in. The following July I was detained, which felt like a warning. I left soon after for an artist’s residency in Poland and have been postponing my return ever since.

But even in exile, I and others have not given up on Belarus. People keep fighting by organizing protests, speaking out and supporting our neighbor Ukraine. And we keep telling the truth.

Editors’ Picks

The Best of the Rest: A Game to Rank Your Favorite 21st-Century Genre Movies Why the Word ‘Like’ Drives People Bananas Traveling During a Heat Wave: Tips and Precautions

Two men sit facing the camera. — Andrei Ausievich, left, and Vadzim Ermashuk, in Warsaw. Both were imprisoned in Belarus. “Back then, I believed in the law — I thought if you didn’t break it, you wouldn’t go to jail,” Mr. Ausievich said of the time before he was sent to prison. “Now I understand: There is no law in Belarus. Anyone can be jailed for anything.”

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

A portrait of a woman with her hand over her mouth. — Vesta Herman in Warsaw in March 2022. She told me that she and her husband had to leave Ukraine after Russian troops poured into Ukraine from Belarus, because nobody would rent them accommodation with Belarusian passports.

A portrait of a woman in uniform. — Natalya Suslova at the base of the Kastus Kalinouski battalion, a volunteer unit that is helping to defend Ukraine as part of the official army, in Kyiv in 2022. Many opposition activists have traveled to Ukraine to take up arms.

Two people sit on a couch before a table set with cakes and snacks. — The Belarusian hosts of the satirical YouTube show “Lukasholki,” which uses humor to lampoon the regime, photographed in Warsaw in January. That month “Lukasholki” was designated an extremist organization in Belarus.

A large crowd gathered, some draped in flags and others carrying them. — Belarusians gathered in Warsaw in March 2022 for a Freedom Day rally. Even in exile, people continue to fight for a better future.

An intersection deserted except for two officials. — A border crossing between Poland and Belarus, which Poland temporarily closed after the sentencing of a Polish-Belarusian activist in Belarus.

A man crouched in front of a one-story home. — Andrei Lyashko making repairs to his house in Warsaw. He told me he fled Belarus after taking part in a “round dance” at an intersection in Brest, Belarus, in September 2020, which became infamous in the country. The dance was a peaceful protest to dispute the presidential election, but many of the participants were subjected to criminal prosecutions.

A large seated audience looking to the right. — An audience observes performers at a festival of Belarusian culture in Bialystok, a town in Poland near the border with Belarus, in June 2024.

In this year’s election, with all of the state media supporting Mr. Lukashenko and all of the credible opposition either in jail, in exile or staying silent, Mr. Lukashenko was awarded more than 80 percent of the vote. There was little chance of protest — anyone who remains has learned how dangerous it can be to demand a future that looks different from the present.

Belarus is a warning that democracy is fragile and that authoritarianism is not a wrecking ball but a hatchet, which slowly chips away until everything is broken beyond recognition.