Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “On April 2, the regime marks what is perhaps its most cynical so-called holiday — the ‘Day of Unity of Belarus and Russia’. But the truth is that this ‘unity’ is just a label behind which the reality has always been the same: the gradual destruction of our identity and independence.
In the Kremlin, they like to repeat the same thing: ‘We are one people’. But for some reason, it is always ‘Russian’. To them, the Belarusian language is merely a dialect of Russian. Our unique culture is reduced to rural folklore, and our real history becomes just a minor addition to their rewritten, all-encompassing ‘great Russian’ narrative. This union has never been seen by Russia as equal — it was built to slowly erase our identity and independence and eventually dissolve Belarus into the so-called ‘Russian world’ they dream of. As Karel Havlíček Borovský once said, Russians often call everything Russian ‘Slavic,’ only to later call everything Slavic ‘Russian’.
But Belarusian history is not Russian — it is European: the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, cities with Magdeburg rights, Francysk Skaryna, our schools, literature, and traditions of self-governance. There is nothing in this history about being a ‘younger brother’.
What we see today — Russia’s presence throughout Belarus — is not friendship, but the price Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been paying for 30 years out of the pockets of Belarusians to help him stay in power. And Belarusians are paying for it with their security, sovereignty, and future.
Belarusians do not need such ‘unity’. We need a Belarus that decides for itself where to go, whom to befriend, and how to live. A Belarus where our language, our choices, and our dignity are respected.
We are a proud nation of Belarus, and we will never be a ‘younger brother’. Because we know who we are”.
