"The Generals Didn't Know Which Side To Take."
- 1.05.2026, 9:18
There was a split of the elites in Belarus, but it was not used by those who should have done it.
In Vilnius, in the visit center of the Seimas of Lithuania, on April 22, the presentation of the new book of the American famous historian Yuri Felshtinsky "Natalia Radina's Belarus: journalist against dictator" took place.
The meeting was attended by the editor-in-chief of the website Charter97. org Natalia Radina.org Natalia Radina, coordinator of the civil campaign "European Belarus" Dmitry Bondarenko, and the host was the priest Vyacheslav Borok.
Blogger Dmitry Kozlov ("Gray Cat") published a video of the presentation on his YouTube channel.
One of the questions from the audience concerned the revolution of 2020. Why didn't the security forces move to the side of the protesting Belarusians? Coordinator of "European Belarus" Dmitri Bondarenko pointed out that the people who called themselves leaders did not turn to the military:
- Recently, former political prisoner, lawyer Maksim Znak told about how together with Maria Kolesnikova and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya they took a complaint to the CEC to "borshchevarka" Yermoshina. They did not think of addressing the military, but for some reason took the complaint to an official who was under all international sanctions.
Generals heard no one whose side was being crossed.
But I will note that the split of the elites then took place. We talked to our friends from "European Belarus", who were sitting in the zones. There is another category of prisoners in Belarus, they are really heroes. And they go, as a rule, under the article "treason against the motherland. They are judges, prosecutors, officials, military, police officers, special forces, who refused to carry out orders. And there are hundreds of them, they say. They don't pass as political prisoners. That was the split of the elites, when many people refused to follow orders.
Unfortunately, the leaders who could have done a lot, such as Nikolai Statkevich, the same Pavel Seviarynets, Sergei Tikhanovsky, who acted very bravely, a number of other people, had already been arrested by that time. And I didn't understand at that time why the so-called leaders didn't call on the protesters to go on television and appeal to the military to come to the side of the people. Journalists and, most importantly, technical staff were leaving the television.
But here one should have known the experience of the same Belarusian Popular Front, which, in order to put pressure on the authorities, called on people to come to the television and they were given the opportunity to speak. This was not done in 2020