Solitary confinement gives one ample time to think – to revisit decisions, question assumptions, and confront hard truths.
Locked away, facing a 20-year sentence for defying Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, I often pondered the 2020 presidential campaign, when thousands of my compatriots took to the streets to demand a free and fair election, one that could possibly topple our dictator.
Belarusians protested courageously, creatively, peacefully, and on a massive scale. There was enormous solidarity, and – for a moment – a sense of hope that this odious regime would finally collapse.
But hope is not a strategy, and five years of imprisonment helped me understand that courage alone cannot free Belarus from authoritarianism. What Belarus needs now is a pragmatic path to a democratic future.
In the end, the Lukashenko regime held onto power despite the mass protests, propped up by the sheer brutality of its security apparatus and outside help from Moscow.
By 2021, it had imprisoned thousands of people (hundreds of whom remain behind bars), closed hundreds of NGOs across the country, and helped wage a hybrid war against the West, including by smuggling migrants from the Middle East and pushing them onto the border with EU countries.
In 2022, it helped Russia launch the war against Ukraine.
Our three errors
During my imprisonment, I did not know whether I would ever taste freedom again. But now that I am free once more, I feel a responsibility to share what I have learned from past mistakes. I believe the opposition in Belarus made three strategic errors:
First, we confused mobilisation with power. We believed that if enough people filled the streets, the system would collapse under its own weight. History rarely works that way.
Authoritarian systems are not defeated simply because society rejects them. They fall when pressure from below is matched by fractures from within — when elites begin to recalculate, when institutions stop obeying, and when the machinery of power no longer moves as one.
Second, we failed to build channels within the power structures, engaging those who might one day help dismantle them. Real political transitions are rarely purely revolutionary. More often, they are negotiated, fractured and gradual — shaped not only by citizens in public squares, but also by changing calculations inside the system itself.
Third, we misread geopolitics. Many of us believed the democratic world would stand firmly behind a democratic breakthrough in Belarus. Europe hesitated. Russia did not.
For Moscow, Belarus is not simply a neighbouring state. It is viewed as part of Russia’s strategic security architecture — a buffer, a corridor, a military platform and a sphere of historic influence.
The Kremlin was never going to allow Belarus to drift decisively West without resistance.
These lessons matter not only for Belarusians, but for Europe as well. A pragmatic path to democracy for Belarus will rely on the right kind of assistance from the West.
Let’s copy the Finland example
The best way forward is an often misunderstood but ultimately promising strategy known as “Finlandization.”
During the Cold War, Finland pursued a policy of strict neutrality, by which it pledged to stay away from the great-power conflicts, in return for bolstered security cooperation and assurance that the Soviet Union wouldn’t be attacked from Finnish territory.
This arrangement allowed Finland to retain its independence while maintaining economic and political ties with both sides and avoiding Soviet intervention.
Freedom does not always arrive in a single dramatic moment. More often, it is built gradually through preserved sovereignty, political space, and institutional development.
This was the case with Finland, and this same approach can be used as a blueprint for a modern day Belarus: a commitment to military neutrality and the avoidance of alliances that Russia would interpret as a direct threat, such as immediate Nato or EU membership.
Economically, it would allow continued ties with Moscow while reopening channels to Europe and diversifying partnerships. In other words, Belarus would become a bridge state, rather than a battlefield for larger powers.
Not ideal, but realistic
This is, of course, not an ideal scenario. But history rarely gives perfect solutions to complex problems. The case of Belarus requires realism and level-headedness.
In order for this approach to work, Europe must recalibrate its approach to Belarus.
Europe has isolated the Belarusian regime through increasingly harsh sanctions, but these have failed to bring about better humanitarian outcomes or ease the regime’s relentless persecution of dissidents.
If Europe accepts a strategy of Finlandization, it could consider easing the current sanctions regime in exchange for a measure of political liberalisation – most importantly, the release of the hundreds of remaining political prisoners.
This approach could encourage greater political freedom and economic recovery in Belarus, without necessarily drawing harsh backlash from Russia.
Europe may instinctively reject such thinking as compromise. Some will see it as morally uncomfortable; others will call it naive.
But Finlandization offers a clear example of how states can preserve sovereignty through strategic restraint and balanced diplomacy. And a sovereign Belarus is a worthy aim; it would directly benefit Europe by reducing Russian military leverage on Nato’s eastern frontier and creating conditions for long-term democratic evolution in the heart of eastern Europe.
Most importantly, it would give Belarusians something we have not had for generations: the political space to shape our own destiny. E
urope can play a vital role in making this possible, but only if it is willing to place pragmatism above perfect outcomes.