Dictator vs democracy: Belarus one year on atlanticcouncil.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from atlanticcouncil.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
First published on Tue 25 May 2021 12.34 EDT
In an interview last November the 26-year-old opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich said he was not planning to spend his life in exile. “I would go back to Belarus immediately if my safety was guaranteed,” he said. “My intention is to return.”
Friends have wryly noted that the thunderous and very public manner of his arrest is in keeping with his outsize career and personality. “Everything he does is loud,” Nicolai Khalezin, who has known him for a decade, said. “The riot police came and arrested me. Roma got a fighter jet.”
Khalezin, the co-artistic director of the Belarus Free Theatre, pointed to Pratasevich’s other achievements. They include working as the main editor for Nexta-Live, the Telegram channel which played a key role last year in organising protests against Belarus’s vengeful president Alexander Lukashenko.
In an interview last November the 26-year-old opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich said he was not planning to spend his life in exile. “I would go back to Belarus immediately if my safety was guaranteed,” he said. “My intention is to return.” The extraordinary circumstances of Pratasevich’s involuntary homecoming have provoked international outrage, after his Ryanair flight was forced on Sunday to land in Belarus’s capital Minsk. It was on.