Nothing about us without us
By meeting with the foreign minister of dictator Lukashenko, Poland has now given the regime a huge credit of trust. First and foremost, it is a credit in terms of security: the security of its borders, its internal security (we remember the regime's active complicity in hybrid aggression against the EU and Poland), and the security of the Polish minority in Belarus. We have heard a large number of statements and warnings from the Polish authorities that the coming months may be very difficult precisely in terms of security.
Whether the regime has enough agency to make use of this credit is an open question. But I think that breaching this credit will be the regime's last mistake, in the sense that it will put a final end to the question of its agency and independence. Whether this snowdrop will bloom depends entirely on this factor.
I hope that during the meeting the head of Poland's foreign ministry, Radosław Sikorski, representing the country that is the main friend and partner of the Belarusian democratic forces and Belarusian society, raised the issue of the humanitarian crisis in Belarus. I hope he stressed the importance of ending the mass repressions against Belarusians inside the country and beyond its borders, the largest in the history of 21st-century Europe, as well as transnational persecution and the deportation of Belarusians to Poland. I also hope he drew the regime representative's attention to issues related to Lukashenko's "passport decree". And this list of the regime's repressive actions is far from exhaustive.
The Lukashenko regime has not changed its aggressive and repressive policy to date; it continues to pose a threat both to its neighbours and to Belarusians themselves. Therefore, the credit given to it requires the regime to significantly change this policy, and for now I would assess its ability to do so quite critically.
And, of course, all of this is now being closely watched by the Kremlin, which has completely different plans for Belarus and for using it for its own purposes. We must not forget that Lukashenko has bound himself hand and foot with a significant number of military agreements with Russia.
For us as Belarusians, the most important thing remains the fate of the Belarusian people, which, we would like to believe, will not be decided behind Belarusians' backs. As our Polish friends say, "Nothing about us without us" ("Nic o nas bez nas").
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