More than 150,000Belarusians are estimated to live in Poland, with many arriving just in the last two years as the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko violently cracked down on the mass demonstrations following the rigged presidential election in 2020. Some of these Belarusian émigrés are now volunteering to fight in Ukraine.

According to Ales Zarembiuk, head of Belarusian House, “dozens” of Belarusian fighters have already gone to fight over there, with the most recent group departing on March 15.

“Generally, these are men who understand the current threats from Russia and have a deep knowledge of our tragic Belarusian history,” Zarembiuk tells BIRN. “These Belarusian men want to provide concrete help to Ukrainians with a weapon in their hands and not just sit on the sofa and type ‘I support Ukraine’ on social media.”

Kukhta says there are now enough Belarusians in Ukraine “to form a battalion”, which would include Belarusians coming from their own country as well as expats from third countries, not just Poland. A battalion is a military unit usually consisting of over 300 people.

TheBelarusian battalion bears the name of Konstanty Kalinowski, a Polish-Belarusian hero of the January 1863 anti-Russian uprising that took place across Polish and Lithuanian lands. According to Kukhta, the Kalinowski battalion will be part of the Azov detachment, a notorious unit in the National Guard of Ukraine, whose fighters, originally volunteers, got their first major combat experience recapturing Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists in 2014. Known mainly for some of its members’ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi views, the Azov battalion is also one of themost battle hardened.

Zarembiuk says Belarusian House has received applications from around a thousand Belarusian volunteers. “Our activists carefully verify all the information about each person and then send lists of possible Belarusian volunteers to the Ukrainian secret service and army,” he explains. “The Ukrainian secret service and army then tell us if the volunteers are allowed to go to defend Ukraine.”

When asked why Belarusian House had taken on this coordination role, Zarembiuk replies: “Because Ukrainians are not only defending their independence, but are also fighting for a democratic and independent Belarus, and for independence and democracy in our Central and Eastern European region.”

He stresses this is a “grassroots” initiative by Belarusians living in Poland and Ukraine. “The Polish government is not involved,” he says.

That sense of the common fight of Ukrainians and Belarusians is clearly audible in Pavel Kukhta’s own story. He says he ended up in Poland after his brother, 28-year old Mikita Kraucou, was beaten to death by the Belarusian authorities during the anti-regime demonstrations in August 2020,his body found abandoned in a forest outside Minsk.

“My involvement is not direct revenge against Belarusian service personnel who killed my brother, because we don’t know who they are exactly,” Kukhta says. “But it is against the terrorist regimes of Lukashenko and [Vladimir] Putin.”

Asked whether he is afraid about becoming involved in the fighting, he replies: “They already did everything to me.”

Belarusian solidarity

When Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, with thousands of troops and equipment entering Ukraine from Belarus, Belarusians in Poland were among the first to mobilise to provide help to Ukrainian refugees. Already experienced in providing support to their compatriots escaping repression, Belarusians set up databases to match refugees with homes and drove to the border to pick up Ukrainian families.

Back in Belarus, citizens have protested against the war in Minsk and other Belarusian cities, with around 800reportedly arrested. Belarusian “partisans” have even apparentlysabotaged railways in the country to slow Russian troop and armament movements.

Nevertheless, given that Russian attacks against Ukraine have taken place from Belarusian territory and the Lukashenko regime is aligned with Putin’s, some Poles and Ukrainians have reportedly started discriminating against Belarusians in Poland.

“We have seen cases of shops owned by Belarusians being boycotted through flyers, tyres being slashed on cars that have Belarusian license plates, and cases where Polish shop owners have refused to service Belarusian clients,” Zarembiuk says. “We suspect that Russia is involved in spreading misinformation in Poland to create division between Belarusians, Poles and Ukrainians.”

“Putin’s army attacked from Belarus. But we, citizens of Belarus, have not agreed to this,” a young Belarusian activist in Poland, herself involved in supporting Ukrainian refugees,wrote on social media. “Belarus is currently under occupation by the Kremlin. Lukashenko does not mean Belarus.”

Chechen and other fighters

Like the Belarusians, Chechens in Poland do not necessarily agree with the line taken by their government over the war. The pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrovvolubly supports Russia in the war, including by putting Chechen boots on the ground, but that position is not representative of the roughly 150,000 Chechens estimated to be living across Europe.

On February 26,Akhmed Zakaev, for some years the prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in exile, issued astatement in Brussels declaring that Chechens across Europe were contacting him expressing a will to fight in Ukraine against Russia.

Members of two Chechen battalions, the Sheikh Mansur and the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalions, arereportedly currently fighting alongside the Ukrainian army. The soldiers in these battalions built a reputation as fierce fighters during the two Russian-Chechen wars in the 1990s and 2000s, and later fought alongside Ukraine against the Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region.

In Poland, where around 4,000 Chechens are estimated to be living, a well-placed source in the Chechen communitysaid in early March that 16 volunteers had already departed for Kyiv to fight alongside Ukrainian troops.

At the time of publishing, there is no official information about any Polish citizens joining the Ukrainian army. Under Polish legislation, citizens fighting illegally in a foreign army could face up to five years in prison. To join up, one needs permission from either the Ministry of Defence or Interior, a procedure which can take months.

Several reports in smaller online media outlets claim Poles are already fighting in Ukraine, quoting unnamed soldiers allegedly on the ground, but BIRN could not verify any of these claims.

Like the Poles, Slovaks also face bureaucratic hurdles to fighting in Ukraine. The 70 of so volunteers in Slovakia who have reportedlyenquired about joining the Ukrainian army since the start of Russia’s invasion face a long and difficult approval procedure with an uncertain result.

Their fate lies mainly in the hands of President Zuzana Caputova who, as Slovakia’s commander-in-chief, has the final say over an applicant’s permission to join Ukraine in battle. “The administrative process involves several stages and it is long and very demanding,” Caputova’s spokesperson Martin Strizinectold the Sme daily in early March. “Our legislation is set up to discourage people from serving in a foreign army or legion, and it makes it impossible to issue permission in a short time.”

Those crossing the border without ticking the required boxes risk facing prosecution and a prison sentence of up to 10 years, according to Prosecutor General Maros Zilinka. “Service in a foreign army and participation in the fighting of an organised armed group is a crime,” Zilinka wasquoted by the Slovak Spectator as saying.

The strict rules still allow for exceptions, though. Permission is not required for volunteers that hold the citizenship of the country whose army they wish to join, or if they want to serve in the army of another NATO member state, which of course doesn’t apply to Ukraine.

At the time of writing, President Caputova was yet to issue a decision on the tens of requests to join the Ukrainian army. It would not be the first time, however, that Slovaks were officially allowed to take up arms in a foreign army. Andrej Kiska, Caputova’s predecessor, received four such requests following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk proxy states in 2014. Kiska granted two requests, with the Slovaks reportedlyfighting on the Ukrainian side with the notorious Azov battalion.

Edward Szekeres in Bratislava contributed to this article.