'I had already lost one homeland...if I didn't do anything...I would lose another. I couldn't just stand there, and I couldn't run away again,' a soldier says.
After peaceful protests failed to topple the regime of Kremlin-aligned Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko following disputed elections in 2020, thousands of political exiles left the country. At least hundreds of them have since joined the ranks of Ukraine's International Legion, where they say they are gaining the skills necessary for executing regime change back home.
Pictured, Belarusian volunteers who have been killed in action since the start of the war. Image is part of a museum exhibition in Lviv dedicated to Belarusian fightersOscar, who is in his early 20s, fled Belarus following the country's most recent wave of political upheaval, which occurred following disputed elections in August 2020. In that vote, Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, claimed to have won a sixth term in office with an official vote total of 81.04 percent.
Oscar was released after a few days, and he immediately joined the protest movement that in the weeks following the election brought hundreds of thousands of Belarusians out onto the streets all across the country. The street demonstrations only abated after Lukashenko's security services cracked down, with Moscow's full support, arresting at least 30,000 demonstrators and beating hundreds of them. Oscar and several of his current fellow fighters were among them.
"I had already lost one homeland, and if I didn't do anything, then I would lose another," Oscar said."I couldn't just stand there, and I couldn't run away again. You have to defend what's important to you, and fighting is the only way we can get the experience we'll need if Belarus is ever going to change for the better."
Russia stole my home, and now it was trying to steal my neighbor's home, and I had to do whatever I could to stop them from succeeding.It is not only the opposition-minded young men of Belarus who have taken up the Ukrainian cause. Among them, also dressed in camouflage, was a tall, broad-shouldered young woman going by the nom de guerre"Dasha," whose specialty on the front is the use of rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
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