Former children’s entertainer Aliaksandr Naukovich fled from Belarus to Poland after Alexander Lukashenko rigged the country’s presidential election in 2020. Then he decided to fight for Ukraine
were in front of them. The Russians were behind them. It was, says Aliaksandr Naukovich, as if “the war [were] saying ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’” His unit, a ragtag battalion of Belarusian dissidents, had lived a charmed existence until then, surviving four months of fighting with only a few casualties. But the news coming through was not good.
Mr Naukovich’s new life was comfortable and safe, if a bit boring. But the outbreak of war changed everything. Feelings of shame and guilt pulsed through him: Russian tanks, planes and missiles were swooping from his country into Ukraine, killing people—and only because men like him had been unable to drive Mr Lukashenko from office. Mr Naukovich had no military experience, but his instincts told him he should go. So he packed a rucksack and left for the border.
Speaking in a cafe in Kyiv in June, just before the ill-fated Lysychansk deployment, his hair shaved Cossack-style, the soldier recalled the unit’s early days as chaotic to the point of comedy. Some of the men had military experience, but the vast majority were green: journalists,specialists, welders, lorry drivers. They received only a minimum of training. Mr Naukovich remembers how he trembled as he dismantled a Kalashnikov; he had no idea where the bullets went.
Sergei Bezpalov, a prominent Belarusian journalist also serving in the unit, helped fine-tune the recruitment process. First, prospective applicants send details via an anonymous social-media bot. These are then vetted by “Belarusian Cyber-Partisans”, a hacktivist group better known for sabotaging Russian digital logistics. The successful applicants then head to recruitment headquarters in Warsaw, where they are put on buses to Ukraine.
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