On the evening of June 28, Natalia Zakharenko found herself in a police van, her head covered in a plastic bag and her ears plugged, rumbling through the Belarusian countryside toward an unknown destination.
The 44-year-old Ukrainian citizen believed she was being transferred to prison to serve the nine-year sentence she had been handed in February on what she called a “totally made-up” charges of spying for Kyiv.
“Only literally an hour before we reached the border were we told that we were being taken to Ukraine under an exchange,” Zakharenkotold RFE/RL’s Belarus Service. “I was in shock, and my hands were shaking so much that I spilled my water. I was nearly hysterical and thought it was some sort of dream.”
Zakharenko was one of five Ukrainians serving time in Belarus who were included in an exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia, which has close ties and substantial influence in Belarus. Five others were released from custody in Russia as part of the same exchange.
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Ukrainians Return From Captivity In Russia And Belarus
When they reached the border exchange point, Zakharenko recalled, three Russian soldiers and a priest were waiting in wheelchairs. The wheelchairs, the Ukrainians were told, had to be returned to the Ukrainian side. So they loaded their few belongings on them and pushed them across the border. A waiting helicopter took them to Kyiv.
“It was just like in a blockbuster movie,” she said.
Her only wish at that point, she recalled, was to call her mother and tell her that she was home.
“I still hadn’t fully come around,” Zakharenko said. “It was still like a dream. I was in the city and there were so many people and cars. I was confused and didn’t know what to do with my hands. Should I hold them behind my back like we had to in prison? Or stuff them into my pockets?”
According to Vyasna, the independent Belarusian human-rights monitor, at least 10 more Ukrainian citizens remain in custody in Belarus, accused of espionage.
An undated photo of Natalia Zakharenko from before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine
Additionally, in late 2023, two Ukrainians were among six people reported by Belarusian state media as detained for allegedly “preparing terrorist attacks,” Vyasna also reported. Three other Ukrainian citizens were reportedly detained in two unrelated cases in April 2024. The fate of those five people is unknown.
“Presumably, all of them are being held in custody,” Vyasna reported.
Under authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Belarus has been a key ally in Russia’s war against Ukraine although it has not contributed forces, serving instead as a base for Russian forces and allowing Russia to use its territory to launch attacks into Ukraine.
'My Number Hadn’t Come Up Yet'
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Zakharenko travelled frequently between Belarus and Ukraine, using her van to transport goods to sell at market stalls.
In 2022 and 2023, she continued making regular trips from her home in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv to Mazyr, a city in southeastern Belarus.
The border between Ukraine and Belarus was closed after the invasion, and she made the long journey via Poland, transporting people, documents, medicines, and more. She says she frequently took Belarusians to visit their relatives in Ukraine. For more than a year, she said, she made her trips without attracting any attention from the authorities in Belarus.
In July 2023, however, she disappeared while in Mazyr.
“I made the trips, and no one bothered me,” the entrepreneur recalled. “My number hadn’t come up yet. But then, as they say, it did. I was detained when I had already been in Mazyr for 10 days.”
SEE ALSO: Ukraine Live Briefing: Russian Kills POWs, Says KyivShe calls the espionage accusations “complete nonsense, totally made up.” Nonetheless, after a trial behind closed doors in February, Homel Regional Court Judge Anatol Sotnikau declared her guilty and sentenced her to nine years in prison.
“It was a closed trial, you understand,” Zakharenko said, “so that no one could attend, no one could hear what happened there and realize there was no evidence.”
Although Zakharenko was able to hire a lawyer, she said it was difficult. Most attorneys she approached refused to take on an espionage case.
Natalia Zakharenko signs a Ukrainian flag at a homecoming ceremony in Kyiv early on June 29
Every time she was transported between her cell and the courtroom, she had to present herself to the officers with her full name and the charge against her.
“I had to add ‘inclined to extremist and other destructive activity,’” she said.
In pretrial detention, she met many fellow detainees facing political-tinged charges.
One prisoner, she recalled, was sentenced to one year in prison for writing graffiti containing an anti-Russian slur. Another got 30 months for a social-media comment “consisting of three words.” A third, she said, was sentenced to 18 months for “liking” a social-media post deemed incendiary.
SEE ALSO: 'Lukashenka's Revenge': Nearly Four Years After Mass Protests, State Crackdown Still Reshaping Belarus“I don’t even know what to say,” she added. “I am still in shock.”
She said she had heard about the mass repression of dissent in Belarus since the crackdown against pro-democracy protests that broke out in August 2020 after Lukashenka was awarded a sixth presidential term in an election millions of Belarusians believe was stolen. But still she was surprised.
“What is the expression in Belarus? ‘If you haven’t been in prison, you aren’t a Belarusian,’” she said. “It is just horrific what people there are jailed for.”