JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As the world continues to see more images of rocket attacks, gunfire and destruction during Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the neighboring country of Belarus, Russia’s close ally, is also implicated.
“My heart goes to the people of Ukraine,” said Zhanna Charniauskaya, a spokesperson for the Association of Belarusians in America.
Charniauskaya is an outspoken critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who she says is a dictator aiding another dictator’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As a Belarusian American who was fighting the Lukashenko regime for a long time, I’m devastated that Ukrainian people are going through this hardship of war and atrocities committed by Putin and Lukashenko regimes, both,” she said.
Russia is now facing stiff economic sanctions for invading Ukraine, and Belarus is also facing sanctions for allowing Russian troops to enter Ukraine from the Belarus-Ukraine border.
“An awful turn of events in which our dictator is giving out the territory of our country to wage the war,” said Charniauskaya.
Major companies have recently announced they will boycott Belarus.
“I hope it will be sanctioned more heavily because it should have been done a long time ago,” Charniauskaya said.
She feels that way because many of her fellow Belarusians who protested what they deemed a dictatorship in Belarus were met with retaliation. According to the United Nations, an estimated 1,000 people who protested against the Lukashenko regime were arrested, tortured and some were raped.
Charniauskaya says the Belarusian government is in lockstep with the Russian government.
“We can call it the Soviet Union, we can call it the Russian Empire, but that’s exactly that,” Charniauskaya said.
This past Sunday, hundreds of people in Belarus who protested the invasion of Ukraine were arrested.