While peace talks in Saudi Arabia grapple with Russia’s war in Ukraine, Moscow and its junior partner Belarus are already planning their next military collaboration as Russian convoys are reportedly congregating in Minsk to prepare for Zapad-2025 exercises. Amid this shadow of negotiations and saber-rattling, let’s not forget Alexander Lukashenko’s iron-fisted Belarusian regime, a persistent threat to Central and Eastern Europe.
Among the victims of Lukashenko’s tyranny are members of Belarus’s Polish and Catholic minority, whose cultural identity has made them targets in an intensifying campaign of repression—a campaign that aligns with Russia’s hybrid warfare against NATO. Two cases stand out as stark symbols of this oppression: Father Henryk Okołotowicz, a Catholic priest, and Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and activist. Their stories expose the regime’s deep-seated hostility toward freedom of speech and religion. Much the same way that Putin oppresses any religious leaders who oppose him, Lukashenko cannot tolerate anyone that might unite Belarusian Christians against him.
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