‘Patriots are not mercenaries’. Volunteer fighters protest at Belarusian embassy in Kyiv

Belarusian fighters who joined volunteer battalions among the first has picketed the country’s embassy in Kyiv after the Belarusian authorities started persecuting their families.
The action organized by the Valoshka International Charity Fund was sanctioned by Kyiv city authorities. Shortly before its start, the National Guard’s troops were taken to the embassy by two buses.
Russian and Ukrainian volunteers from Azov and Donbas battalion and the tactical group ‘Belarus’ came to support their Belarusian sworn brothers. About 20 people took part in the action. They held Belarusian and Ukrainian flags and posters: ‘We are patriots, not mercenaries’, ‘For our freedom and yours!’
Our journalist has talked to the parents of Mikhail Zhyzneuski, a Belarusian-born defender of Maidan, who was shot down during the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv in January, 2014.

“We have come here to tell people how they [Belarusian authorities] are treating me, my husband and daughter after Michael died for Ukraine,” Nina Zhyznevskaya said.

According to the Belarusian Interior Ministry,  the country’s law enforcement agencies opened 135 criminal cases against citizens of Belarus who fought or are fighting in Donbas.

“In Belarus, they [police] are persecuting my parents, they searched their flat, exerted moral pressure on my mother, seized her laptop. I urge the Ukrainian authorities to support us and introduce the immunity from our extradition and delivering information about us to Belarusian side,” the volunteer ‘Zubr’ told Belsat.eu.

Read also: Police search flat of Belarusian volunteer fighter in Ukraine

The Belarusian diplomats failed to come and talk to the picketers. According to the organizers, the embassy even refused to accept their apeal to president Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

“As citizens of Ukraine, we urge you to put a stop to repression of Belarusian volunteers and fighters who risk their lives to shield the Ukrainian land from Russia’s military aggression,” the appeal reads.

Read also: Read also: Lukashenka tasks KGB. ‘Belarus has no place for militants fighting in Ukraine’

belsat.eu