Александр Котoвич. Фото из личного архива.
The paradoxes of fate: if he had continued to remain a hostage of the Belarusian regime, sooner or later he would have been released. And with a greater likelihood of coming out alive rather than as a “200” — military slang for a body. Now it is one big lottery. Because back in his homeland, the Kremlin has unleashed a bloodbath.
I am talking about Aliaksandr Katovich — the only Ukrainian with a tenth (“extremist”) preventive registration status whom I met behind bars. First, we were transferred together from Minsk Detention Centre No. 1 (in April 2024, “Valadarka” was in its final days before being disbanded) to Mahiliou, where we waited at Prison No. 4 for appeals against our sentences to be heard, and then to the penal colony in Shklou. That was where our paths diverged, because I was immediately packed off to the stone “sack” of the isolation unit, while he was taken under the control of the security services. And, as if to mock him, he was assigned to produce military uniforms for the Russian army — the de facto occupier of his homeland.
We were not in touch again until November 2025, when he was among around thirty Ukrainian citizens returned to their homeland with the mediation of the US side. There was little effort to distinguish who had ended up in captivity and how. After all, Aliaksandr Katovich’s new home was precisely in Belarus.
At a certain point, the young man’s life became closely intertwined with Belarus, ultimately costing him his freedom. He met a Belarusian woman in his native Odesa; they fell in love and got married. At first, they divided their time between two addresses, but in 2019 they settled permanently in Minsk. The Ukrainian obtained a residence permit and found a job at an IT company, with which he continued to work right up until his arrest.
When Putin’s army treacherously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, he, as someone who was not indifferent to what was happening, said everything he thought about the aggressor and its accomplices on public online platforms. A system that is inherently vindictive recorded his remarks and filed them away in a special “folder” alongside those of other people deemed disloyal. When the time came, it acted — a full year and a half later. Initially, investigators opened a criminal case on charges of inciting hatred. Among other things, they accused him of administering the “Belarus Beyond the Moscow Ring Road” chat, although the charge was eventually dropped: they had to admit that the defendant had merely been an active commenter, responding to bots and brainwashed “patriots” who lashed out with remarks such as “kill the Ukrainians,” “the Russians will wipe out the Nazis,” “Odesa will be ours,” and so on. Nevertheless, a whole cluster of criminal charges eventually accumulated, and on 28 March 2024, the Minsk City Court announced its verdict on the totality of the alleged “crimes”: five years in prison, followed by his inclusion on the security services’ lists of extremists and terrorists. The human rights community recognised him as a political prisoner.
— Of course, I was completely unprepared for such a turn of events. Although I understood that Belarus and democracy were simply incompatible… In the penal colony, they immediately made my ethnicity the central issue: since I was Ukrainian, I had to keep as quiet as possible. If you draw attention to yourself, you will simply disappear. When I was brought to the quarantine unit, Moskalyov, the deputy head for regime and operational work at Penal Colony No. 17 — a gloomy, unpleasant type — summoned me personally and began asking why I had been imprisoned. I said it was for comments. By the way, the chat was added to the list of extremist formations only after my arrest, but they applied the relevant article retroactively.
— I explained that it was difficult to hold back when your country was being bombed. His reply stunned me: “And when you were shelling Donbas, was that fine with you and people like you? Well, now you’ve got what you deserved. If you start sticking your neck out, I personally guarantee you a trip around Belarus’s Golden Ring of penal colonies.” Those are his exact words. What am I supposed to be in prison for? Telling the truth? Even if you want to punish someone, your own law provides for a fine. As a last resort, there is a procedure for revoking a residence permit in Belarus. But here they immediately gave me five years in a penal colony! In any case, they made it absolutely clear that I was here entirely deservedly. As if I had chosen this path myself. It was easy to see the deliberate pressure being brought to bear.
That is exactly how it turned out: total control over every movement, every casual remark. Among the convicted prisoners, there were plenty willing to repeat everything they had seen and heard and pry into your “seditious” thoughts. They reported absolutely everything to the operational officers: who you socialised with, what you talked about, whom you treated to something, even if it was just a cigarette. They sent in lackeys to ingratiate themselves with you and find out whatever information they needed. Even if it was completely pointless, in Belarus, where total control extends from state-owned enterprises to the penitentiary system, every word has to be recorded.
Aliaksandr Katovich still had more than half of his sentence to serve. Yet one morning, on 22 November, the unit commander suddenly ordered him to pack his things. Apparently, he was supposed to thank Lukashenka for his “goodwill”. The Ukrainian already knew about previous expulsions of Belarusian political prisoners and, somewhere deep down, had hoped for a similar outcome. However, the last thing he expected was to be deported to his homeland. His wife remained in Belarus, and entering Ukraine from a state co-aggressor was effectively impossible for her.
— I heard that there were other Ukrainians in the Shklou penal colony, but given the prejudiced attitude towards me, my contacts were completely controlled and the chances of crossing paths with them were reduced to a minimum. At least in the fourth unit, I was the only Ukrainian. I met another one only after a search in the holding area, when we were being prepared for removal from the camp. He had been convicted under Article 328, the drug-related article, and had just 40 days left to serve. That tells you everything you need to know about this “goodwill”. Of those roughly thirty people who were released, perhaps only a third were political prisoners.
— Can I imagine myself living in Belarus in any circumstances? No, no and no. Despite all its internal problems and contradictions, not to mention the external challenges, Ukraine has managed to take a completely different path. In your country, there is a total crackdown on dissent, and Lukashenka holds on to power through force. The regime wants everyone to think and act in the same direction. People are being systematically brainwashed everywhere. Something like that would be impossible here. Any tyrant would be swept away, as past experience has shown.
— Although, for me personally, this is an enormous family tragedy. And it is completely unclear how to get out of this situation. My wife is simply afraid: even if she came here, what guarantees would she have for the future? Her mother is there, and she cannot abandon her. And the security services would certainly have questions for her. It is a very troubling situation.
After his early release, Aliaksandr Katovich never got to see his wife, who remained in Minsk. He managed to meet his mother only six months later. Strangely enough, mobilisation made that possible.
Events then unfolded rapidly. After transiting through Homiel and being handed over to officers of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) at the border, the pardoned prisoners were expected to undergo rehabilitation in Kyiv. This was to include not only medical assistance but also interviews with security services to establish whether they might have been recruited. Everyone understood the need for such precautionary measures, especially given Belarus’s role in the war. At the same time, documents had to be restored because the men had been sent out without passports. At least, that was the case with the political prisoners.
Almost immediately, however, Aliaksandr Katovich faced the prospect of mobilisation. It turned out that he was wanted in his homeland. Call-up notices had been sent to him by the Territorial Recruitment Centre (TRC), but no one looked into the circumstances of the emergency that had prevented him from responding: he had been serving a sentence in Lukashenka’s country.
Hopes that he would be granted the same status as civilian prisoners held by the aggressor state, which would have entitled him to at least a six-month deferment — after all, he had endured his own personal war with the Belarusian regime — came to nothing. The reasoning was that Belarus had not declared war on Ukraine and that politically motivated persecution was a different matter.
Joint efforts were made to involve international human rights organisations in his case, but there was not enough time to activate any legal mechanism. On 19 February this year, the former political prisoner was mobilised. He initially underwent the required training at a military training centre and was soon assigned to a military unit as an army records clerk. Just three months of respite between prison and war. His only advantage was that, whether by design or by chance, he was serving in his own city of Odesa. At least he had the opportunity to see his mother from time to time.
— My status remained unclear to the very end. Probably not just to me, but to everyone. Formally, I qualified as a civilian prisoner. I have all the evidence in my hands, above all the politically motivated sentence imposed in a co-aggressor state. It was obvious persecution for criticising Putin’s war. Yet after rehabilitation, I was left with no alternative to mobilisation. It is not that I was opposed to serving; it just happened too quickly. I needed at least some time to recover from being held captive by Lukashenka’s regime!
— The first month after deportation was by far the hardest. On the one hand, people were instinctively wary of me, and I had to integrate into society on my own. On the other, I had absolutely no idea what my uncertain status meant or what lay ahead. By the way, another group of pardoned prisoners was released after us, in December, and it also included five Ukrainians. Their documents were accepted for the purpose of obtaining official status. I, meanwhile, have had to send out requests and collect official responses on my own. In fact, the very first response, from the National Information Bureau, stated that its departmental register contained no information about my persecution. Accordingly, I was not eligible for an exemption from mobilisation.
For more than six months now, Aliaksandr Katovich has been contributing to Ukraine’s effort to drive out the occupiers. Unfortunately, he cannot share details of his service because it is subject to understandable security restrictions.
Although there is little time to dwell on his “colonial” adventures in Belarus, Aliaksandr Katovich admits that, from time to time, the memories come flooding back. How is it that so many people who are fundamentally good have been so thoroughly emptied out by propaganda? This is particularly true of prison staff, from the administration to the rank-and-file guards.
— Perhaps people within the system of vertical power are not exactly brainwashed, but propaganda rubbish has been drilled into their heads at the state level since kindergarten and school. They are told what is right and how they should behave. There is no independent thinking whatsoever. From early childhood, the news and society at large feed them a narrative that Russia, China and countries like them are true friends who do nothing but good, while Ukraine and the West as a whole are irredeemable enemies from whom nothing positive can be expected. Accordingly, the emphasis is on the Soviet-style “victory cult,” while other dates have simply been erased from memory. This is the ideological foundation on which everything rests.
Prison staff see the situation in much the same way, according to what has been instilled in them. Moscow is the real peacemaker, they believe, while you Ukrainians have brought what is happening upon yourselves. You are to blame for your own misfortunes. If you had not angered Russia and had shared your territory, you could have carried on living. Just like Belarusians, who are, in reality, already under occupation. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have a somewhat different mentality and different principles. It is clear that independence as a political principle does not appeal to fools like Putin.
As for the memories, the prison on Akrestsina Street was undoubtedly a kind of nightmare. I was thrown into a punishment cell where 12 people were already crammed in. We stood packed together like horses; there was simply no room. We took turns squatting. In summer, the temperature was hellish, above 40 degrees Celsius. You could wring the sweat out of your clothes. Conditions on “Valadarka” were somewhat more lenient, but the cells were terrible, overcrowded and unsanitary. Most importantly, as the investigators changed, the number of charges brought against me kept growing. This was especially true of anything involving Lukashenka personally: they took offence on behalf of the “moustachioed one” and considered it slander to say that administrative resources had been used in the elections. Mahiliou was more difficult, with greater surveillance of prisoners marked with yellow identification tags and pointless drill. And Shklou meant the screws were tightened to the maximum: limited contact with others and psychological pressure. This did not affect Ukrainians alone; Belarusian political prisoners were almost constantly in the punishment isolation unit. Once you were placed on the tenth preventive register, that was it — you were an arch-enemy.
In 2025, the Ukrainian government adopted a resolution granting a deferment from mobilisation to citizens who had been held captive as a result of Moscow’s armed aggression. However, the recognition of civilian detainees held in penal institutions on the territory of the Kremlin’s closest ally remains an ambiguous issue. This is because the status is directly tied to the concept of an “aggressor state,” a designation officially applied only to Russia. Belarus is therefore formally excluded from the blacklist. Nevertheless, cases have already been documented in which people released from Belarusian penal colonies were granted the relevant status. Aliaksandr Katovich’s lawyer continues to work on his case.