Former Belarusian Political Prisoner: Ukrainian Medics Were In Shock
- 26.12.2025, 12:44
How prisoners of Lukashenko's regime were taken to Chernihiv.
On December 13, after the meeting of Alexander Lukashenko with the U.S. special envoy to Belarus John Cole, 123 political prisoners were released in Belarus. All of them were taken abroad, most of them to Ukraine. Former political prisoner Sergei Rudenkov, who also went to the Ukrainian territory after the release, told the site Charter97.org how the process went:
- They took them out at five o'clock in the morning, came before the rise, with their belongings were taken to the "airport," as they call the place of inspection. There they went through the things, some of which were confiscated, took away all the documents and medicines. Then they put a bag on his head and put him on a bus and transported him to penal colony 15. From there they took about ten more political prisoners. All of them were taken by bus to Gomel. There was a stop there, where political prisoners were taken from the women's colony. Then they took them all together to the border. They waited there for some time, then were transferred to other buses, handcuffs were taken away, their hands were wrapped in duct tape and they were taken again somewhere, at that time it was unclear where. A little later it turned out that it was a post on the Ukrainian border. There we were handed over to the Ukrainian armed forces. The Ukrainians released us, cut the tape off our hands, untied our eyes, and there I saw Pavel Severinets, Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babariko.
We were brought to the hospital in Chernihiv, where we stayed for two days. We were examined, "patched up". Those who were in a bad condition were especially carefully examined. The doctors in Chernihiv almost cried when they saw our condition, they were shocked. They asked: where did they keep us like that? According to them, our condition was as if we had been brought from Auschwitz.
Then we were transported to a hotel, where we also spent two days. Often there was an air raid, we jumped up several times during the night and moved to the basement. Then we were put on a bus in the morning around five o'clock and transported to Warsaw, we practically traveled for twenty-four hours. There, some of the former political prisoners stayed in the hotel, and those who decided to go to Lithuania went on their way.