Page 61 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

bne June 2024 Eastern Europe I 61
The investigators speculate that Lukashenko may have decided to build a bolthole in Russia outside Belarus after the 2020 mass demonstrations followed a massively falsified presidential election that year, which came close to toppling the Belarusian strongman. Lukashenko has promised several times to leave the presidency but recently said he will stand for re-election again next year.
Luxury villas
Russia has become a popular refuge
for former presidents and others on the Interpol wanted list. After he was ousted in 2014 during the EuroMaidan revolution, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych also fled to Russia and now reportedly lives in luxury in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
While still president, Yanukovych also built himself the opulent Mezhyhirya Residence just outside Kyiv. When protesters stormed the palace the day after Yanukovych fled the country, they found the villa bedecked in marble,
a room full of fur coats, as well as a private zoo that was home to ostriches. But the centrepiece was a loaf of bread made of solid gold, which has since disappeared.
Luxury residents are also popular amongst the elite in Eastern Europe.
In 2021, the late Alexey Navalny’s team released a sensational investigation into the so-called Putin’s Palace that was viewed by over 50mn people in just two days after its release.
The sprawling complex on Cape Idokopas on a promontory on the Black Sea coast of Russia near Gelendzhik first came to public attention in 2010 after whistle-blower Sergei Kolesnikov published an open letter to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev exposing the construction of the palace.
Putin’s yacht Olympia accompanied
by patrol ships was seen moored at Cape Idokopas on several occasions and the facility was managed by people associated with the Federal Protective Service (FSO) that had closed the airspace over the villa to air traffic.
Former Nexta editor Protasevich says he owes Belarus authorities $7.6mn in damages
Ben Aris in Berlin
The former editor in chief of social media channel Nexta Roman Protasevich says he owes the Belarusian authorities $7.6mn in damages.
During the mass demonstration in 2020, Nexta played a crucial role in coordinating the crowds in an otherwise leaderless revolt, following the massively falsified presidential elections that returned Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to office.
Protasevich was arrested when Belarus scrambled a MiG-29 fighter to force down a commercial Ryanair flight and land in Belarus as it transited Belarusian airspace en route from Athens to Lithuania where Protasevich was living in exile. The incident caused an international outcry at the time and all flights from the EU were banned and EU airspace was closed to Belarusian flights as a result.
Protasevich has been stuck in Belarus ever since and has been in and out of jail as Lukashenko flip flops on his status. He was released and appeared on state TV denouncing the protests on one occasion, but had bruises on his wrists suggesting that he had been tortured by police while in detention.
Now he revealed on May 7 that he and his co-defendants in the Nexta case have been ordered to pay the Belarusian state approximately $7.6mn as compensation for their participation in the mass protests in 2020.
Protasevich said a court had ruled that Protasevich, Yan Rudzik, and Stsiapan Putsila, co-founders and editors-in-chief of the Nexta Telegram channel were loiable for damages caused by the mass protests that went on for months. Nexta has since been designated as an “extremist” organization by the regime.
"The total compensation demanded by the court was $7.6mn," Protasevich said. Rudzik and Putsila were convicted in absentia and remain in exile. Protasevich is the only senior member of Nexta that is still in Belarus.
“I have no idea what to do about this and how to go on living,” Protasevich said following the ruling, Kyiv Independent reports. “It's clear that I don't have even close to that kind of money. Even finding a job now is extremely difficult for me. I have three choices: to leave, to pay 50% of any income for the rest of my life, or to walk into the noose.”
Protasevich was sentenced to eight years in prison in May 2023 but was pardoned by Lukashenko two weeks later.
At least 161 Belarusians were charged in politically motivated cases in April, the Viasna Human Rights Center wrote in its report, the Kyiv Independent reports. Almost two thirds (64%) of the criminal cases were initiated on charges of “participating in actions that grossly violate public order,” from the mass anti-government protests in 2020.
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