“If you go out and start protesting, you’ll be thrown in jail,” Balenok said. “Maybe you’ll come out one day. Maybe not.”
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya protested the election from the Polish capital Warsaw on Sunday. “Today, we marched for freedom in Warsaw — united and unshaken, honoring our heroes who gave their lives for freedom,” she posted on X, alongside photos from the demonstrations.
“Together, we are unstoppable,” she said. “As Belarusians, we will never lose hope. We will reclaim our country and return home stronger than ever.”
But Aleś Alachnovič, economic adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, said the mood in Belarus itself was dour.
“People feel that the costs of protest increase while the benefits of protest decrease. They don’t see that right now their votes or their actions can change anything,” Alahnovic told POLITICO on Sunday. “Lukashenko and his forces, they can kill people, they can arrest people, they can close businesses of people who are disloyal and everything else.”
As he cast his vote, Lukashenko told reporters that some of his political opponents had “chosen” to go to prison or into exile. While no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law,” he was reported as saying by Reuters.