Six years ago, on 8 September 2020, dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka began publicly lying and manipulating information about Maria Kalesnikava. A day earlier Belarusian authorities tried to forcibly take her out of the country — she tore her passport at the Ukrainian border and stayed. Then came a closed trial, 11 years, years without contact with the world. On 13 December 2025 Kalesnikava was freed.
7 September 2020: abduction and the passport
Kalesnikava — campaign coordinator for Viktar Babaryka, then one of the three women of the joint opposition campaign and a Presidium member of the Coordination Council — stayed in Belarus when many others were already pushed out. On 7 September 2020 plainclothes officers seized her near the National Art Museum in Minsk. Together with Anton Radniankou and Ivan Krautsou, security forces drove her toward the Ukrainian border — to expel her, as they had earlier with Volha Kavalkova.
At the border Maria tore up her passport. Without a document she could not be “legally” let out. Krautsou and Radniankou ended up in Ukraine and said it was a forced expulsion, not a “voluntary departure.” Kalesnikava was detained — covered by BBC and independent Belarusian media.
8 September: Lukashenka’s words — and another reality
The next day the dictator told Russian state media a version convenient for the regime. It was amplified by BelTA and state TV CTV. The manipulation: not abduction and deportation, but an alleged “escape” by the opposition, whom border guards “detained as required.”
“She and two of her friends — whether drivers, close people or distant ones — fled to Ukraine today. Everything was arranged in advance. They presented their passports at our checkpoint — border guards and customs let them through.”— Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 8 September 2020, interview with Russian media (BelTA)
“Naturally they were stopped. They hit the gas in their car; she was — either thrown from the car while it was moving… Our border guards, of course, detained her as required.”— Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 8 September 2020
“And why Ukraine, not Lithuania, not Poland, as they usually go? They say someone has relatives there. I am not asserting that… We will sort out what happened.”— Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 8 September 2020
He also demanded that Kyiv “return” Radniankou and Krautsou, calling them border violators. Witnesses’ truth is the opposite: the regime tried to dump a woman out of the country; she wrecked the special-services operation with one gesture. Kalesnikava later said that in those minutes she feared for her life. Six years on, the dictator’s words read as a textbook of 2020 state lying: turn the victim into a “fugitive,” and abduction into “detention by the book.”
Closed trial and 11 years
On 6 September 2021 a closed court (no public, not even relatives) sentenced Maria Kalesnikava to 11 years. Tried with her was Maksim Znak (10 years). The charges were three Criminal Code articles:
Art. 361(3) — calls for actions against national security;
Art. 357(1) — conspiracy to seize state power by unconstitutional means;
Art. 361-1(1) — creating and leading an extremist formation.
Reported by BBC, Nasha Niva and Amnesty International. The prosecutor asked for 12 years each. Case materials were classified; lawyers signed non-disclosure. A political sentence for staying — and for not breaking.
Incommunicado
As Viasna described (covered by Current Time and Nasha Niva), Maria was long held incommunicado: no calls, visits, letters or parcels, delayed medical care. For months relatives did not know if she was alive or in what condition. That is not “correction” — it is isolation as torture for a protest symbol the regime feared even behind bars.
13 December 2025: freedom
On 13 December 2025 Kalesnikava was freed among more than a hundred pardoned prisoners and taken to Ukraine — with Viktar Babaryka and others. The release was reported by Nasha Niva, Viasna and international media. The regime sold it as “mercy” in exchange for eased Western sanctions. For history, something else matters: the woman labelled a “fugitive” six years earlier was first thrown toward the border, then buried in a closed courtroom and a silent cell — and still was not erased from Belarus’s memory.
Why remember 8 September
The date is not calendar sentiment. It is the point when Lukashenka’s lie about Kalesnikava became state line: turn violence into “order,” heroism into “flight,” the victim into an offender. Six years later the facts side with a torn passport — not with the dictator’s interview on Russian TV.