Belarusian university in exile fears Lukashenko’s long arm

One of the students is 23-year-old Russian Sofia Sapega. Last Sunday she and her boyfriend Roman Protasevich were stopped at Minsk airport. Sapega studies international and European law at the EHU. “In a few weeks, she must defend her thesis,” explains Tsimofey Mishukevich, president of the university’s student union.

But the chance that she could actually do it seems nil. “She’s in a KGB prison in Minsk. That’s all we know now,” says Milta. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus did not change the name of the secret service. “Of course, we are using all our diplomatic channels in Brussels and Washington to exert maximum pressure to get her and Roman released. We are doing everything we can, but so far without success.”

“The border with Belarus is only thirty kilometers away”

Many students are in shock, Mishukevich said. “That’s all it is about now, everyone is concerned with Sofia’s kidnapping, but also with their own safety.” Until last Sunday Belarusian students thought they were safe in Lithuania, but now they have lost all illusions about it. “We know that Belarusian security services are most likely also working here, watching us,” Mishukevich said. “The border with Belarus is only thirty kilometers away, the students are terrified. Sofia is one of us, we think we can all be next.”

“Of course we are upset,” Maksimas Milta also says. “But it unites us too. It is not the first time that we have faced this kind of setback, and it will not be the last.” According to Milta, there are two other students and two former students of the University of Minsk, as well as 420 other political prisoners: “We are resilient and know that we must persevere. One day, the terrible will end. The Lukashenko regime. “