Vaskrasenski Repented for Being in Babaryka's Team: I Was Deluded, Like the Entire Belarusian People

Yury Vaskrasenski. Photo: Nasha Niva

"What kind of talk about reconciliation can there be, as long as people are mostly suffering from your absolutely inadequate and utterly unprincipled leaders. What about Crimea, whose is it? Greek, right? Your released leader, the banker, said so. So, I really feel sorry for these people," Vaskrasenski stated.

To Sudalenka's remark that in 2020 Babaryka was also a leader for Vaskrasenski himself, he replied:

"For some time, yes. I won't deny the obvious. In my 30-year career, for 2-3 months I truly had to believe that this candidate from the Kremlin, a Gazprom candidate, could somehow liberalize the economy, breathe new potential into it.

I was also deluded, like our entire Belarusian people. Some by COVID, some by Babaryka, some by other candidates. But thank God, this process of delusion personally lasted only 2-3 months for me. That's the maximum. And that's because I mainly worked "in the field" daily.

I was a field worker daily "in the field," communicating with people, with leaders of other districts. And all of them were pro-Russian. All of them."

In 2020, Vaskrasenski, as a member of Viktar Babaryka's initiative group, was engaged in collecting signatures in Minsk and coordinating actions in Uruchcha. After the elections, his role in Babaryka's team was often exaggerated in the media. He himself claimed to have allegedly collected 40,000 signatures, but most of them were deemed invalid.

On August 12, 2020, Vaskrasenski was arrested by the KGB, who initiated a criminal case against him for "mass riots" and "blocking transport." In state media, he was labeled as an "organizer of protests." Vaskrasenski stated that he had met with political scientists in Moscow who allegedly gave him money and discussed plans for destabilization in Belarus, and that he was used as a "pawn."

After almost two months in pre-trial detention, Vaskrasenski began appearing on state and foreign TV channels as a "mediator" between the opposition and the authorities. He supported Lukashenka, criticized the opposition, and organized a round table on constitutional amendments, but democratic forces did not recognize his initiative and refused to participate.

Yury Vaskrasenski has been noted in various pro-government activities to this day, but he holds no official positions. He has never been, and is not, perceived as even a somewhat independent figure. Usually, through him, as a supposedly "independent opinion," certain ideas are floated and voiced that official representatives of the regime find inconvenient to express themselves for various reasons.

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