Natallia Kalehava: Belarusians Of Lithuania Ready To Support Kalinouski Regiment’s Liberation Campaign

The situation in Belarus may change drastically.

Many Belarusians who ended up in Lithuania after the 2020 protests passed through the Dapamoga center, which is run by Natallia Kalehava. In an interview with Charter97.org, she spoke about the assistance to refugees from Belarus and Ukraine, the Belarusian military unit in Lithuania, and the desire of Belarusians to return to their homeland.

— I have been living in Lithuania for quite a long time. Back in the 90s, I left science and went into business. In 1997, I met my current husband. We tried to build a life in Belarus, but very soon he said that it is better to live in “poor Lithuania” than in “rich Belarus”. At that time, the formation of Lukashenka's dictatorship was already palpable, so I took my son and since 2000 we have been living in Lithuania. One of the delights of life here is when a policeman rings your doorbell, you open it, and you know that he is on your side, that he has come to protect you.

In Lithuania, my husband and I built a business, but in 2020 I stopped doing it and switched to helping Belarusians. It was planned to take a month or two, but it turned out that I am still doing this.

— Why did you decide to leave the business, and start helping Belarusians?

— When the election campaign began in Belarus, and some kind of movement suddenly started, I, frankly, was very surprised. When I came and asked people how they could live like that, many answered that it wasn’t so bad. There have been no obvious protest moods lately. My husband and I thought: “When this bastard dies, how will you live?”

When all these rallies began in Belarus, we also started going to the actions that were organized here. Then it was August 9, we went to the embassy, but we were not allowed to vote. Out of a thousand people, only 120 voted. Many Belarusians stood for 12 hours under the sun, but they were not given the opportunity to vote. We relaxed, and started hoping that we had lived to the moment when democracy would suddenly win in Belarus. But when we woke up in the morning, we saw official data, we saw that the people had been beaten. We went to the embassy, there were a lot of people with flowers and candles.

Thus began our daily confrontation. Then the humanitarian corridor began to work, or rather, it was announced, but it did not work. People started calling me: “Natallia, help, we are running away, but we don’t need a refugee status, we need a humanitarian corridor.” I somehow got engaged in this, helped. And then on August 29, the phone rang, my assistant told me: “Natallia, we have refugees here.”

You have to understand that we are engaged in renting apartments here, I had absolutely no intention of doing such things. My assistant offered to help people, and I agreed. There was a family with two children and one other person. They came from Novalukoml, and had never been to Europe before. I settled them in a large apartment, started helping, then the mentors joined in and somehow it started to spin.

Then we went to the Lithuanian High Commissioner and agreed, together with the migration department, the police and border guards, how the humanitarian corridor should work. Then more people called, more. And you kind of helped a person, helped another, helped the third. Then you can’t help but help, because you think like, I can handle it for another month, I’ll handle it for two more, I’ll handle it for some more. And so the system was formed, mentors appeared, so that when a person arrives, they would have a friend, comrade, brother, guide to Lithuanian life here. Then there was still quarantine, and all these restrictions were in effect, but it was necessary to make sure that people did not feel abandoned. And so it happened.

A couple of months ago I realized for myself why I suddenly took up this. You cannot tell for yourself when and why you fell in love with a certain woman. You just fell in love with her and you can't explain why. In my life, when I saw Belarusians of 2020, this feeling happened.

— How did you see these people who started coming to Lithuania in 2020?

— That's over a thousand people. If we start talking, then I can just talk endlessly. But we had one story that was very interesting, and then it was shown on the BBC. Minsk residents from Hrushauka neighbourhood went to the rally. On their way back, their car was stopped. During the search flags were found. People were dragged out, severely beaten, and their car was confiscated. After the beating, the driver was taken to the hospital, and his wife with two children and three other people fled along the humanitarian corridor. They contacted me, and I helped them. And this young lady was very worried about her husband, she cried every day. During the detention, his passport was left in the glove compartment of the car, which was confiscated. It was impossible to get the documents.

At that time, I already had guys from Babaryka’s headquarters, with whom we became friends and still communicate. It turned out that one of the girls came running and “kidnapped” Tsimur Mitskevich. He was a minor boy back then. By the way, he is now in the Kalinouski regiment. The police had taken Tsimur, chained him in the hospital, and this girl kidnapped him from there. There were stories like that too. Then she herself was forced to flee, because her car was lit.

We sat down with her, talked and came up with an idea that could work. Then there was just the inauguration of the illegitimate Lukashenka, and everyone was set up for this case. Her husband managed to get a passport in three days, we quickly transferred it to Russia. There he got a visa and he has already got here through Kaliningrad. A happy wife met her husband. It was such a first case of a good job done together.

— Do you need to render help to many Belarusians now?

— Basically, of course, now there are “extreme Belarusians”, those who got here through fields, forests, rivers. Most of them are political prisoners. Since 2020, more than a thousand people have passed through us. Last year my husband bought a big 650 square meter house. I did not look so far then, and was against this purchase. And my husband said that let your Belarusians live here for a start. First, he gave us two rooms, then three, then four, then five... At the moment, my husband has one room left in this house, his office, while Belarusians live in all the rest. The more the merrier.

— After February 2022, you started helping Ukrainians as well. To what extent did the Belarusian diaspora in Lithuania get involved in helping refugees from Ukraine?

—When all these humanitarian affairs began back in 2020, I fell off my feet, I was very tired. But besides mentors, I had two more girls who helped a lot, two Natallias. One is a Lithuanian with Russian citizenship, the other is a Belarusian with Lithuanian citizenship. They then came to me, and asked why I did not call them. I replied that I had no money to pay them. And they didn't want to be paid, they wanted to help as volunteers. Since then they have stayed with me. On a volunteer basis, they helped a lot.

And when the war started in Ukraine, many of our Belarusian guys came and said they wanted to help. They set up a headquarters of sorts here. When it was the hottest time, we practically spent nights at the workplace. To date, the flow has slightly decreased, but the aid has remained at the level of humanitarian depots and transfers. Many of our protest guys are in the Kalinouski regiment, we help them with turnstiles, body armor, helmets, now we have bought jeeps. Well, that's how we fit into this situation. But this is not me, but people from our organization, these are volunteers who received help from Dapamoga at one time. This is probably one of the beautiful stories, because they received help and now they themselves are helping.

— How strong was the resonance among the Belarusians in Lithuania to Belarusian volunteers fighting against Russian invaders in Ukraine?

— We all generally lived by this, there was not a single person who would not help. We have just returned from a rally in support of Ukraine, which takes place every Monday. And there is always half of the Belarusians. We also hold our own rallies. Yesterday we came out in support of Autukhovich and signed letters. Any step still affects the situation.

Ukrainians see us, our flags, they come to our humanitarian warehouse. They come up to us and say not about the fact that missiles are flying from Belarus, but thank you for the fact that the Belarusians are also fighting for Ukraine, helping the Ukrainians. Some even asked for forgiveness for not knowing anything about the Belarusian revolution. After talking with us, many left drawings with the inscription “Long live Belarus”, they were inspired by the fact that Belarusians are so modest, but brave and strong. So it's a very beautiful story.

— Many Belarusians are faced with being treated worse after the complicity of the Lukashenka regime in the war with Ukraine. In Lithuania, do the media and society separate Belarusians and the Lukashenka regime?

— We were lucky. We are on very good terms with the Lithuanian authorities and ordinary Lithuanians. For them, Belarusians are generally brothers, and this is true. When we go out to rallies, any Lithuanians passing by say that we are with you, you are our brothers.

Just as the whole world now stands for Ukraine, so Lithuania stood for Belarus in August 2020. And when the war started, Prime Minister of Lithuania Ingrida Šimonytė spoke. She said that everyone who will allow themselves to display intolerance towards Russians, towards Belarusians, will be considered provocateurs. Lithuanians know the whole truth about the Lukashenka regime.

— How to fight against Lukashenka's regime today?

— I can’t give advice to those who stayed in Belarus, I haven’t been inside the country for a long time. It's scary enough to be there, and experience background stress every day. But I can tell what we can do here.

Here we can unite, not be scattered. I do not mean the tops of the headquarters or something else, but the people themselves.

And secondly, and this started from the very beginning of the war, I am very grateful to the initiative of our boys and girls, who began to prepare for a war, an armed situation. One day it so happened that I had the opportunity to take them to a meeting of the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union. We appeared there, the right people said the right words, they said, look, Belarusians are sitting in the hall, they are grateful to us for giving them a roof over their heads, supporting them morally, they are ready to defend Lithuania in case of danger, but they are not citizens of our country. Then the Riflemen’s Union said that let's think about how to go along this path. And on July 30, we came to the moment when the desire to create an international branch under the Riflemen’s Union was recorded.

I see that in this way you can stay on topic. We must always be ready for any development of events, because the situation in Belarus can change drastically. As soon as Lukashenka's regime loses its bearings, the Kalinouski regiment will be one of the first to go inside Belarus from Ukraine. In this case, 80 percent of people from the Belarusian branch of the Riflemen’s Union will also end up in Belarus. The Belarusians of Lithuania are ready to support the liberation campaign of the Kalinouski regiment.

— We can say that today many bright, talented, educated Belarusians have left the country. What do those who left say in private conversations? Are they ready to return and work for the benefit of the new Belarus after the victory?

— I have been living abroad for a long time and I can tell you a few examples based on my experience. The first is that when the 2009 Lithuanian crisis hit, a large number of Lithuanians left to work in England, Sweden, Norway, and so on. But in Lithuania, the right to private property is respected and it is protected by the Constitution. Therefore, the Lithuanians made money there, but they understood that it was necessary to invest money in their homeland. I have seen entire villages rise. But then, when Lithuania began to return from the crisis, young people, for whom traveling around the world became as simple as traveling by bus, began to return to the country. And if, for example, 12 percent of the population left, then 7 percent returned. The people who returned came highly educated, trained in the principles of democracy, they learned to live according to European principles. Whatever happened in 2016, 2017, 2018, Lithuania steadily increased its performance, because such people returned.

Now let's take Ukraine. In 2014, a lot of people were forced to go abroad. The same Mariupol, in 2014 it was quite a Soviet city. But before the war there was a coronavirus pandemic, many Ukrainians returned home. They managed to see how people live in Europe, and returned back. The resistance that we have seen now was not expected by Putin's villains. People said: “We don’t need it like in that Russia, we need it normally, we know how people can live.” Ukrainians wanted to live differently, to live in their own country, and make it richer. They realized that they have their own home. Ukraine has changed a lot from 2014 to 2022.

During Lukashenka's rule, a total of about two million people left Belarus. Let's say that 10% of them will return, although this is a very low figure. So, these 200 thousand will return, who will want to invest, who will want not to miss the moment, to start a business. That's what laws are for. If it is like in Lithuania, where the right to private property is enshrined in the Constitution right on the front page, then this will become a very strong engine for a comeback. If there is confidence that private property is protected, it cannot be taken away, then many Belarusians will return. Now they are afraid, they simply do not know what a free Belarus is. But all this will change. Because many Belarusians, between prison and the right to breathe, have chosen the right to breathe in order to be nourished with normal air, take it into their lungs, and then be useful.

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