Belarus dissident's capture turns to a tale of betrayal

When the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko sent a MiG fighter jet to intercept a Ryanair passenger plane carrying an exiled anti-government activist and his girlfriend two years ago, he turned the young dissident into a martyr of the struggle for democracy.

The plane, flying from Greece to Lithuania, was forced to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, after authorities there claimed falsely that there was a bomb on board. The episode stirred international outrage and put an admiring spotlight on the Belarusian activist, Roman Protasevich, now 28, and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, 25.

This week, Lukashenko rewrote the script, turning what had been a story of democratic ardor and young love thwarted by tyranny into a dark tale of political and romantic betrayal.

Arrested along with Sapega in May 2021 at Minsk airport, Protasevich received a rare pardon Monday from a government not known for its mercy. A video released by the state media showed him standing in a leafy park as he expressed thanks for the “great news” and declared himself “insanely grateful” to Lukashenko, whom he once compared to Adolf Hitler.

He had previously broken up with Sapega to marry another woman, posting a photograph online last year of himself kissing his unidentified new bride. How he met her while still in the clutches of a Belarusian security apparatus that keeps many of its prisoners in solitary confinement has never been explained.

With everything that Protasevich has said or done publicly since his arrest two years ago filtered through Belarus' state media and supervised by security officials, it cannot be established with certainty whether he has really changed sides — nor, if he did, what pressure he endured while in detention from a regime that has long tortured political prisoners.

But there is a wide consensus among fellow opposition activists that Protasevich has turned against them.

“Please don't praise him as a freedom fighter. He is a very dark figure in this whole story,” Andrei Sannikov, an exiled opposition leader, said by telephone. “We don't want to hear his name ever again. He betrayed his girlfriend. He betrayed his friends and colleagues. He betrayed the whole movement.”

Franak Viacorka, the chief of staff to the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, accused Protasevich of securing his pardon by collaborating with Belarus' fearsome secret police agency, which has clung to its Soviet-era name, the KGB.

Protasevich's transition from martyred pro-democracy hero to widely reviled collaborator is “a very important story which teaches us how cruel regimes like Lukashenko's are,” Viacorka said in a statement to The New York Times.

“We do not know what torture they used against him. We saw him on TV — he was just destroyed. He looked very miserable, sick, beaten, and he shouldn't have been there.”

Before his arrest, Protasevich worked from exile in Lithuania and Poland as the editor of Nexta, a channel on the Telegram messaging app that played an important role in organizing huge street protests that swept across Belarus in 2020 after Lukashenko claimed an implausible landslide victory, his sixth, in a presidential election widely viewed as rigged.

Facing a possible death sentence for treason, Protasevich quickly dropped his anti-Lukashenko fervor after his 2021 arrest.

He appeared on Belarusian state television in June that year with bruises on his wrists and what looked like a bruise on his head, confessing to having organized anti-government protests and urging a “neutral position” toward Lukashenko. His family, supporters and Western officials said at the time that he had made the remarks under duress.

Viacorka said this week that while he felt some sympathy for Protasevich, “I do not know if I will be able to forgive” him because “if you collaborate you put dozens or perhaps hundreds of people in danger.”

But he cautioned against judging Protasevich too harshly. “I do not know how I would behave personally in such a situation,” he said. “We should be very careful when we assess the behavior of one or another person.”

Doubts about Protasevich have been growing for months, particularly since news emerged last year that he had been released from a grim pretrial detention center into house arrest while Sapega, his girlfriend, had received a six-year jail sentence.