Belarusian political prisoners who were taken to Lithuania in September 2025 described a night in the KGB pretrial detention center in Minsk, their forced expulsion, and life after release without documents. The interviewees included Yauhen Afnagel, Maksim Vinyarski, Andrei Voinich, and blogger Dmitry Kozlov, known as Gray Cat.
Afnagel said that 13 political prisoners from different penal colonies were brought to the KGB detention center the day before the expulsion. At first, he thought he was being taken to face new charges: shortly before that, a man had been placed in his cell and kept asking about the 2010 protests. Only when he saw Mikola Statkevich, Dmitry Dashkevich, and Hennadz Fedynich in the cell did he realize they were probably being removed from the country.
On the way to the Lithuanian border, the prisoners were reportedly given identity certificates instead of passports, signed by Alexei Begun, head of the citizenship and migration department, along with single-entry Lithuanian visas valid for 15 days. Their passports, the former prisoners said, remained in their case files. As a result, some of those released were left without full documents and with an unclear legal status.
Maksim Vinyarski said that on the neutral strip Nikolai Statkevich tried to prevent his expulsion and got off the bus. He insisted that, as a Belarusian citizen, he had the right to return home, but border guards answered that without documents he would not be allowed in. After speaking with his mother, Vinyarski chose to go to Lithuania, fearing further consequences for his family and for his sister Elena Tereshkova, who had been sentenced to a form of restricted freedom known as “home chemistry.”
Andrei Voinich, who had been seriously ill even before his arrest, spoke about prison conditions: political prisoners were repeatedly sent to punishment cells and PKT units, deprived of parcels, and forced into hard labor. He cited the example of one inmate with hepatitis who studied prison regulations and tried to use them to defend at least minimal rights against the administration.
Dmitry Kozlov was the only one in this group who kept his passport. He said he was taken from Penal Colony No. 20 in Mazyr during the night, handcuffed, and forced to wear a hood before being driven to the border. Kozlov also alleged that prisoners were used in production linked to the war against Ukraine: sewing shops made pouches and chevrons, while woodworking shops produced ammunition crates.
All four men now live in one apartment in Lithuania. Three of them have no documents, and their future remains uncertain. Despite everything they endured, the author writes, they have kept their sense of humor and hope.