Belarusians after the elections: between apathy and fear

Andrei Vazyanau looks at why last month‘s presidential election did not produce the huge protests witnessed five years earlier.

The 2025 presidential elections in Belarus have been called the calmest, especially in contrast to 2020, when the most massive protests in Belarusian history broke out. The absence of open demonstrations against the obviously falsified results was secured by ongoing mass repression – participants of the 2020 protests are still beingdaily arrested, fined, banned from their profession and dispossessed of their property, in a country that has lost more than 5% of its population within five years.

The electoral campaign was organized in a way that discouraged any expression of dissent – with reports of forced collection of signatures and voting andvoting polls for Belarusians abroad completely absent. The  months before the elections were marked by mass detentions, which also affected people coming back from abroad. After a mass protest action of Belarusians in Warsaw, Poland, on election day, officials in Minsk claimed to have identified hundreds of participants and started checking whether they have property and relatives in Belarus.

Still, there is more than Lukashenka‘s violence inciting political apathy in Belarusian society. Firstly, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense destruction and civilian death to Ukranian cities, as well as the loss of dozens of thousands of combatants on both the agressor‘s and the victim‘s side. In 2022, Russian armed forces attacked Ukraine from Belarusian territory, both on land and from air. The Belarusian regime also assisted Russia in its agression, including the abduction of Ukrainian children.

Part of Belarusian society might even benefit from the war economically, given that the country’s defence complex produces armaments for Russia. However, within the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, partisans in Belarus undertook about eighty diversions to slow down the movement of Russian military materiel towards Kyiv. In Ukraine, Belarusian volunteers formed the Kalinouski regiment to fight on the Ukrainian side. The Belarusian Armed Forces did not join the war, and the last Russian missile that was launched into Ukraine from Belarusian territory was in October 2022.

Belarus today is not experiencing mass Belarusian deaths at the front line or under bombardment; there are no thousands of veterans without limbs. Furthermore, in Belarus, unlike Russia, killing Ukrainians has not established itself as a social lift, a money-making strategy, or a way to escape prison. According to surveys, while not wanting the Belarusian Army to join the war, Belarusians also do not consider that Belarus is at war. Thus, despite the mass repression, they have something to lose: the lives of their nearest and dearest, their homes, and entire landscapes like those destroyed by Russia in Ukraine.

Intuition of this is a backbone of Lukashenka’s rhetoric. It construed peace in Belarus as the main achievement of the dictatorship to be preserved, by whatever inadequate and controversial means, in the name of Belarusian sovereignty – according to surveys, losing statehood by joining Russia is a consistently unpopular idea in Belarus. By manipulating these fears, the regime draws attention away from the daily ongoing politically motivated detentions, dismissals and dispossessions inside Belarus.

The fear of war and loss of sovereignty also affect the perception of the West inside Belarus, where most of the pro-democratic protesters of 2020 remain. Access to Western goods is rarely discussed in Belarus, instead “the sanctions” are mostly mentioned in relation to mobility and visas.

Since 2020, the mass repression has divided many Belarusian families across the EU-Belarus border. After 2022, many EU countries introduced restrictions on tourist or other visas for people with Belarusian passports. Additionally, the withdrawal of EU consular offices and embassies from Minsk has made the visa application process for Belarusians much harder, even in comparison to Russians. Consular offices of some EU states in Minsk even require that Belarusian applicants travel to Russia to apply for a visa.

 Out of several railway connections between Belarus and EU countries, none is functioning since 2020. Many other reactions by Western stake-holders isolate the Belarusian population from the West rather than the hit the regime. The withdrawal of Tinder in 2023 made chatting with Poles from the Belarusian territory more difficult while giving way to Russian dating apps. In July 2024, the copyright holders of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series refused to authorise translations into the Belarusian language, stating they did not want to deal with anything Belarusian while Belarus is under sanctions, although speakers of Belarusian have long been discriminated against in Belarus by Russophones.

In August 2024, when Russia and Western countries exchanged political prisoners in Ankara, Belarusian imprisoned oppositionists were ignored, although Belarus released a German citizen as a part of the deal. In a polarized Belarusian society in which disinformation is widespread, such stories are told victoriously by both Lukashenka and Russia supporters, which are overlapping but not identical circles.

In this context, Belarusians engage in quiet resistance to Russian expansion, rather than open protest against Lukashenka’s regime. Some avoid buying Russian goods at the grocery, which became especially difficult to do after mutual sanctions between Belarus and the EU. Others reject job offers from Russia, which comes at cost – in Belarus, salaries are lower, opportunities are fewer in number and the risk of repression is higher. Yet other Belarusians opt to spend their vacation in the EU and undertake the visa quest – but border police and embassies use increasingly formalistic approaches, annulling Schengen visas for reasons which have not counted as violations throughout decades. Since monetary tactics of resistance meet so many obstacles, many drift towards inner emigration and downshifting, virtually invisible from outside.   

Andrei Vazyanau is Assistant professor at the Department of Social Sciences, European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Image: Alexander Lukashenko https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexander_Lukashenko_2022.jpg Source: Kremlin.ru,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.