Kyiv’s Maidan Square on Sunday was a panoply of different ethnic groups and activists from the entire spectrum of Ukrainian society, who had gathered in remembrance of the 2014 Maidan revolution and in opposition to Russia’s mounting aggression. Flags from a host of Ukrainian political groups joined those of the country’s Crimean Tatar minority, alongside other entries such as a trio of Chechen men holding the banner of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, crushed by Russian forces at the start of Vladimir Putin’s rule.

The largest foreign presence, however, was a group of activists from Ukraine’s neighbour to the north: Belarus. Their home country, under the heel of dictator and close Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko, is currently hosting 30,000 Russian troops and looks to be a major staging ground for the looming war.

Against this ominous backdrop, Kyiv’s Belarusian emigre population is standing up for their new home.

Tatyana Martynova, a Belarusian journalist and activist, stood draped in the white-red-white flag used by the Belarusian opposition. She is not pleased to see her country come under effective Russian rule in recent months.

“It is simply a de facto annexation of Belarus,” Martynova says about the Russian military presence there. “It’s mostly already happened. No one wants these Russian soldiers there, but they have no say in the matter,” she adds.

Russia is currently conducting joint military exercises in Belarus, with whom the country exists in a loose supranational confederation known as the Union State. The war games, scheduled to run for 10 days, were recently extended indefinitely,  sparking fears that Russian troops in the country could participate in an invasion of Ukraine, whose capital lies just 80 kilometres from the border.

Belarus, which has long held a largely pro-Russian orientation but has tried to balance that with ties with the EU, has shifted strongly towards the former in the past two years. In mid-2020, falsified election results that gave Lukashenko yet another term in power resulted in mass street demonstrations that nearly toppled his regime. Despite the challenge, Lukashenko managed to hang on – in large part due to heavy Russian support.

Analysts now say that the debt for that support is now being called.

“The fact that Lukashenko’s survival was ensured by Putin’s support over the past two years means that [Belarus] has no choice” over its present course, says Katsiaryna Shmatsina, a Belarusian political analyst. “Because [Lukashenko] is weak and relies on Russia, he will go along with them,” she says.

Lukashenko has strongly backed Putin in the current crisis. He has said his army would go to war alongside Russia’s if conflict occurs, while claiming the West wants to ‘drown the region in blood’. Always eccentric, the Belarusian leader has come off as even more aggressive than Putin in recent weeks, claiming last week that Belarus would use ‘not only nuclear but even super-nuclear’ weapons to protect itself (it was not clear what exactly he meant).

The crackdown that kept Lukashenko in power in 2020 was the genesis of much of Kyiv’s Belarusian population today.

Alexandra Molotova, a 37-year old lawyer, fled the country that year with her husband.

“We came [to Kyiv] at the end of October 2020, because of the [fallout from] the events of August,” she says. “We gathered signatures for [disbarred opposition candidate] Viktar Babaryka’s presidential campaign. Because of this, we came under intense suspicion from Belarusian security forces,” she says.

Their escape from the country was a close-run thing.

“We had long known that we might have to flee the country,” Molotova says. “In the end, we were very lucky. OMON [riot police] had come to our apartment in August, beaten my husband and arrested us, but they let us go. When we finally decided to flee [in October], we learned that they had come back with more serious charges two days after [we left]. We would probably still be in prison [if we hadn’t left],” she says.

The crackdown destroyed most of Belarus’s civil society and activist community.

“Most of my friends in Belarus are already long sitting in prison,” says Martynova. “Some of them are active in the underground. Others just try to live their lives, because they can’t see how it’s possible to resist in this current situation,” Martynova says.

Belarus as a state, meanwhile, increasingly resembles merely an appendage of Russia.

Belarus is “basically acting like an oblast [province] of Russia,” says Shmatsina. “Even before this, during the migrant crisis [where Belarusian authorities encouraged Middle Eastern migrants to use the country as a gateway into Lithuania and Poland], Belarus’s actions were benefiting Russia. The Belarusian authorities were the actual troublemakers, but the pressure on Europe and testing Nato’s patience was useful for Moscow,” she explains.

“[Russia] already controls [Belarus’s] exports, military, banks and media,” says Martynova. “Lukashenko didn’t oppose any of it. He sits in his own ‘apartment independence’. As soon as he says anything against [Putin], he’ll be gone the next day,” she says.

The loss of sovereignty has been a hard pill for many Belarusians to swallow.

“It was always the greatest fear in my life, that Belarus will again become part of Russia, and now it seems it’s happened,” says Molotova. “The Russian army is there for these so-called ‘exercises’ and will not be leaving, they are already inventing the reasons why. They have occupied my homeland,” she says.

Meanwhile, the Russian soldiers in Belarus are not exactly making many friends.

Reports about the conduct of the troops in Belarus paint a dire picture. Locals say that the Russian soldiers drink voraciously, getting violently intoxicated almost to the point of death. Low quality and insufficient food rations have led to soldiers stealing farm animals and goods from stores, with local residents too terrified to approach the authorities about the matter. Tanks and other armoured vehicles have heavily damaged roads, and even firewood is being stripped from the area by encamped soldiers.

“Of course they are drunk and terrorising people,” says Molotova. “This is the normal condition of the Russian soldier, and we understand that they have not exactly sent us their best,” she says.

For the Belarusians in Kyiv, like those at home, meanwhile, there seems little left to do but wait and watch, whatever may come.

“The current situation is one in which millions of people sit as hostages of these two inadequate dictators,” says Martynova. “And this is in Europe, despite the fact that Belarus is a European country, just like Ukraine, and even like Russia,” she says.

“We discussed what we will do if Russia invades,” says Molotova. “We chose [to come to] Ukraine because it’s the second most homelike country for us. The people here have the closest mentality to us, it already feels like home. We have so many friends here who just want freedom and democracy, the way we did in Belarus. We won’t run away from here.”