Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00Warsaw supporting Grzegorz Brown, the European Parliament last
00:00:03week lifted his immunity, this is already
00:00:07the sixth lifting of immunity, and Grzegorz Brown, as he
00:00:10walked around and organized happenings, he still walks around and
00:00:14organizes happenings. Shameless happenings, because
00:00:17he brings signs that he then dismantles himself,
00:00:21but I actually think it would be good if
00:00:24Grzegorz Brawn bore the consequences of his
00:00:27actions, so that we don't have to anymore. which he
00:00:30funds
00:00:40is precisely for that, but this is a person who should disappear
00:00:43from public space, from media space, because he not
00:00:47only harms, he is simply dangerous, thank you
00:00:50very much, our guest on today's question was
00:00:53today MP Aleksandra Leo,
00:00:56Centre Union, I invite you now to a special report.
00:01:37Good evening, my name is Bianka Mikołajewska, I invite you to a special
00:01:40report, today on the program the returns of Andrzej
00:01:43Poczobut.
00:01:45In April 2026, after five years spent in a Belarusian
00:01:49prison, Andrzej Poczobut was released and came to
00:01:52Poland. He agreed to participate in a prisoner exchange and leave Belarus
00:01:55only on the condition that he would be able to
00:01:58return there. Last week he returned to Grodno, but
00:02:02only for a few days, does
00:02:05he plan to return permanently, how did the local
00:02:08services react to his appearance in Belarus, and does he not
00:02:11fear that he will be imprisoned again? I invite you to
00:02:14a film by Patryk Szczepaniak and Konrad Szczygiel, after which there will be an interview
00:02:18with Andrzej Poczobut.
00:03:00they simply considered that I was glorifying criminals and thus
00:03:03sparking animosity on national grounds, and the aim of these
00:03:06animosities is to annex a piece of Belarus
00:03:10to Poland, well, that I took part
00:03:13in an international conspiracy, but I was the only person
00:03:17whose name in this conspiracy was mentioned,
00:03:21in Grodno, Andrzej Poczobut stood before the court, who for many years
00:03:24was active in an illegal organization that allegedly united Poles in
00:03:28Belarus.
00:04:08today we are talking in your mother's
00:04:11hundred-year-old house, why are we talking here, not
00:04:15on the
00:04:15bank of the Niemen,
00:04:21unfortunately, where in Belarus I started a
00:04:25family and built a home,
00:04:28I was illegally detained by the Belarusian authorities, imprisoned
00:04:32and served my sentence and was deported from
00:04:36Belarus and cannot return to Belarus at this time
00:04:39for sure and I am afraid that I will never be able to
00:04:43return there. Belarus suspected that I was
00:04:46spying for the benefit of the Republic of Poland,
00:04:50spying on my brothers-in-law,
00:04:53because all of us, the lawyer,
00:04:56me, my wife, all of us, well, we thought it was
00:04:59some big misunderstanding, that
00:05:02the lawyer, who used to be a judge, an old
00:05:05experienced lawyer, also couldn't believe it, because there was one witness who
00:05:09testified against me, said that I tried to give him
00:05:12some bribes for writing down some car numbers
00:05:16and something like that, and also presented my father-in-law as
00:05:19evidence. In
00:05:22court, I asked the witness when it was, he
00:05:25told me a specific date there, 2011,
00:05:28I think, that I
00:05:32said, "Judge, I have no more questions for this gentleman."
00:05:36The judge says, "Why?" I say, "My father-in-law had been dead for two
00:05:38years."
00:06:59Andrzej, hail and glory to the heroes,
00:07:02good, God keep him safe, thank you, you've suffered
00:07:05so much, thank you, I watched all the time,
00:07:09all the time I watched on TV what was happening to you. whom
00:07:42I did not glorify anyone, but only wrote about heroes.
00:07:58I also glorified according
00:08:01to the accusation, and in my final statement I
00:08:04said
00:08:05that
00:08:18The regime of Alexander Lukashenka has become a regime that is difficult
00:08:22to call authoritarian today, it has increasingly developed totalitarian
00:08:25elements in recent years, and a good example of this is that
00:08:29for writing even an innocent post on social
00:08:31networks, one can end up in prison for many years, not
00:08:35a post that would say that Alexander Lukashenka should be president,
00:08:39but even one written in Aesopian language, when from...
00:09:42to confront his point of view, which he
00:09:46wrote down somewhere walking down the street or or or or sitting
00:09:49with a beer, well, yes, Alexander Lukashenka doesn't
00:09:53like Poles, I feel it, we
00:09:56feel it, and this is the core, the core
00:09:59of the conflict that we have in Belarus, that
00:10:03the Polish minority has with the authorities in Belarus, this
00:10:07is the core of our identity, because we are defending our
00:10:10identity there, that's all.
00:10:12That's all and that's a lot, because as it turns out, suddenly
00:10:16it's a great crime to be a Pole in Belarus, to have Polish
00:10:20views, to pay homage to Polish
00:10:22heroes, to know Polish history. Generally,
00:10:26the Belarusian regime destroyed everything that was independent, regardless of
00:10:29whether it had red and white or white-red-white colors,
00:10:33so inevitably, there have been no independent media in Belarus
00:10:37since 2020, there are no independent
00:10:40non-governmental organizations, well, inevitably, there is also no independent
00:10:43Union of Poles in Belarus. The elections
00:10:46in Belarus were falsified.
00:10:4980% of votes for Alexander Lukashenka, that's the result
00:10:52of the exit poll, the government one. In
00:10:55Belarus, huge crowds of demonstrators are protesting against President
00:10:58Alexander Lukashenka and the elections, which they claim he falsified. One can say
00:11:02that until 2020, Lukashenka's regime tolerated this
00:11:06unofficial activity, but
00:11:10the pacified protests, huge social
00:11:13protests, led
00:11:15to the end of this stage
00:11:19in the activity of the Union of Poles, the Polish minority in
00:11:23Belarus, part.
00:11:55well, I thought, who best fits the
00:11:58role of such a villain, who was
00:12:01to realize this, well, of course, I concluded
00:12:05that in Belarus, the Union of Poles fits best, and accordingly
00:12:08me, well, at a time when pro-regime historians in recent years
00:12:11are saying that Poland should pay reparations
00:12:15to Belarus for the occupation of the territory of present-day Western Belarus in the interwar
00:12:19period, if basically in the last two
00:12:22or three years we have... a return to
00:12:25the Sovietization of the historical policy of the Belarusian
00:12:28state, if at this moment a figure
00:12:31such as Tadeusz Kościuszko is hidden,
00:12:35well, then caring for language, caring for history, caring
00:12:38for the memory of even the Second World War, not the Great Patriotic War,
00:12:42but the Second World War, caring for the memory
00:12:46of the Home Army, well, that
00:12:49contradicts the official line of the city at
00:12:52this moment, Poczobut...
00:12:55became a threat, because he wrote honest texts about the situation
00:12:58in Belarus as a correspondent for Gazeta
00:13:01Wyborcza, so he was on the regime's radar
00:13:05as a person who is suspicious, as a person
00:13:08who is unreliable and needs to be watched very carefully, the regime really doesn't
00:13:12like people who have strength of spirit, who are
00:13:15unbreakable, there are few such people who are unbreakable, who
00:13:19are unyielding, Andrzej Poczobut is such a
00:13:22person.
00:13:28It was early in the morning, my son went to
00:13:32school, he didn't close the door behind him, meaning they were
00:13:35closed, but not locked,
00:13:38and in the morning I wake up, make tea,
00:13:41go out, suddenly the door opens, people in balaclavas
00:13:44are standing there,
00:13:47I say, "Please come in," well, I understood who they were and why
00:13:51they came, "Please, please, please come in," no, no, no, not
00:13:55that, that there's no camera yet, that they're not prepared, so they just tried to get
00:13:58through the door
00:14:01to their own surprise they saw that the door was
00:14:03open,
00:14:06we became neighbors in cells, I remember that, I remember that it was somehow
00:14:10around mid- December,
00:14:13we sat together through the wall several times, we talked, you talk there
00:14:17in a specific way, because you remove the pipe from
00:14:21under the
00:14:23sink, and you talk into the pipe, and he also took the
00:14:27pipe and through that
00:14:30there was communication through the wall through
00:14:33the siphons, I remember that
00:14:37it was Christmas Eve, I think, so on
00:14:40Christmas Eve I sang him a carol "Przybieżeli do Betlejem pasterze", it starts
00:14:43at 5 AM, they turn on the Belarusian anthem and they turn on the
00:14:47light and that's how the day began, and in the
00:14:50meantime, three meals.
00:14:54In addition to that, there was a
00:14:57walk, if I was in a
00:15:00cell-type room, meaning in better
00:15:03conditions, but if I was in solitary confinement, there was
00:15:07no walk at all
00:15:09anymore,
00:15:12they put me in such a "stakan", I sat in that
00:15:15"stakan" for an hour or two, then it was
00:15:17there again,
00:15:20"stakan" is like, well, a glass, "stakan", like such
00:15:24a room, you can only stand there and a little bench
00:15:27you can sit a little and there is no peephole only they
00:15:31can observe you through that peephole and you sit there you sit in this
00:15:35cell, well
00:15:45in summer it's muggy, over 40 degrees, and in winter it's zero and
00:15:48black walls, no ventilation at all, it
00:15:52was terrible, very cold, if they wanted to make
00:15:55it even colder, they opened the doors in the building and
00:15:59there was a draft or a draft or
00:16:02they opened the window opposite the cell and
00:16:06again.
00:17:07when bending,
00:17:10I have shoulder problems, golfer's elbow, I already had
00:17:13varicose vein surgery here in freedom, because my varicose veins
00:17:17appeared in prison and
00:17:20I had my teeth treated now
00:17:22too,
00:17:24Jerzy Żywolewski, lived in Grodno, recruited in the
00:17:28early 2000s by Polish military intelligence,
00:17:32operated under the pseudonym Poseidon, how
00:17:35were you treated in prison?
00:17:38I think the same as other prisoners, I didn't feel
00:17:41that I was treated better or worse, the authorities
00:17:45treat all prisoners here very well and according to the law
00:17:48and it was the same with me, why did you take part in this, you could
00:17:52have refused, I couldn't refuse, they threatened you
00:17:55that something might happen to your son, yes, yes, yes,
00:17:58they showed a picture of my son, that he will cross
00:18:01the pedestrian crossing, he won't, he will make it, he won't, this is a systemic
00:18:05physical and psychological destruction of people. That is, hard
00:18:09work, very difficult conditions, frequent solitary confinement, as in the case
00:18:12of Andrzej Poczobut, this is a system, which
00:18:16survived from the times of the
00:18:19Soviet Union, it may be slightly modernized, here
00:18:23I will be a bit ironic, but its purpose
00:18:27is still the complete psychological and physical destruction of people who pass
00:18:30through this penitentiary
00:18:31system.
00:18:51Dear Madam Marshal,
00:18:54High Chamber, thank you very much for the opportunity
00:18:58to speak before you,
00:19:02I am very moved on the one hand, because for me
00:19:06it is an honor to be able to be in the Senate, on the other hand,
00:19:09it is very easy for me to speak, because I know that I am among
00:19:12friends, that I am among those on whom one can
00:19:16count in difficult times, regardless of
00:19:19who currently holds the office of president or prime minister in our country, the
00:19:23policy here has been consistent and from
00:19:26the moment Andrzej was arrested,
00:19:29Poland very clearly said
00:19:32that this is an absolute condition
00:19:36to even try
00:19:43that everything that is happening to Andrzej simply hurts us and we will discuss with
00:19:46Mr. Chargé d'Affaires the issue of Andrzej
00:19:50Poczobut, who is still in prison.
00:19:53The regime in Minsk understood that Andrzej Poczobut was an important bargaining
00:19:56chip, that he was political prisoner number one from the
00:20:00point of view of his importance for Poland, and that he
00:20:04was such an ace up Belarus's sleeve.
00:20:07whom it should not dispose of, and it is already too high
00:20:10a price, without an attempt to thaw
00:20:13relations between the Trump administration and Lukashenka's
00:20:16regime, we would probably still be waiting for Poczobut's
00:20:20release, several times in the last two or three
00:20:23years, even without Trump in the White House, there were
00:20:26talks and it was even close to Poczobut's release,
00:20:30Lukashenka's regime backed out at the last
00:20:33minute, showing even more what importance Poczobut has for
00:20:37the
00:20:37city,
00:20:42on Monday, I sent an SMS, whether everything is confirmed,
00:20:46of course, yes, 8:30 at Kaferenna.
00:20:54to Białowieża with his
00:20:58team, we reached the border guard post in Białowieża,
00:21:02then I was transported to that crossing, the inactive crossing
00:21:06was completely cut off by Polish
00:21:09services here, this was my first contact as a journalist
00:21:13with such a large security operation conducted
00:21:15by the Polish state, and there the
00:21:20machinery was actually incredibly
00:21:23perfectly
00:21:24prepared,
00:21:29when I was led out of the camp and handed over to
00:21:33the KGB, to KGB officers who were already transporting me to
00:21:36the border, the last officer who was
00:21:40to let me out beyond the prison gate, he
00:21:43says, "Where are the documents for his
00:21:46release, or for his transfer?" They say, "There will be no
00:21:50papers." He says, "Well, how will he write
00:21:53it?"
00:21:56He says, "Write whatever you want, they'll explain it to you later." He says, "Well, they've already taken
00:21:59people out, there were always some papers." I say, "There will be no papers here."
00:22:03We wait,
00:22:06on the other side stand Belarusian border guards,
00:22:10some people, suit, dark glasses, stone
00:22:13face, they look in our direction and the door opens, a man also
00:22:17in a balaclava comes out and leads...
00:22:21leads another man by the arm, thin, dressed in a tracksuit,
00:22:24in a baseball cap, no question whether it's Andrzej
00:22:28Poczobut, the closer he gets, the more sure I am that it's Andrzej
00:22:31Poczobut, very emaciated, very, very
00:22:35nervous, he walked with some kind of fury.
00:22:56I had the opportunity to call the Polish
00:22:59embassy in Minsk, which was important to me, I
00:23:03told him that around, they told me that I
00:23:07would be able to return, if I could return, then I would
00:23:11agree to cross to the
00:23:14Polish side, the Polish idea was not to exchange
00:23:18Andrzej for a spy at all. There was also a Belarusian spy in
00:23:22the group of exchanged people, but the point was for Andrzej to be
00:23:25exchanged for another prisoner, so that
00:23:28there wouldn't be a situation where, since he was exchanged for a spy, he was also a Polish
00:23:31spy, so it was decided to pair
00:23:35him with that Russian archaeologist, so that no one could
00:23:39say he was exchanged for a spy, it was deliberate, I also told the Belarusians
00:23:42, this whole bunch, I told them that listen, where have you brought me, I don't
00:23:46know anything, who, what, soon there will be the same masked people
00:23:50as you, to whom are you handing me over, do you want me to go or
00:23:53something, if you want me to go, not for you to drag me, then
00:23:57there must be a person I know, I ask him quite
00:24:00frightened, not to say more, Andrzej, do you
00:24:03recognize me, and he says, of course
00:24:06I recognize you, and he comes
00:24:10closer and then, well,
00:24:13I break down, I fall, I just grab him by the arm,
00:24:16yes and Andrzej says:
00:24:20"Well, will I be able to return?" This is
00:24:23precisely a certain type of heroism, perhaps not entirely understood, especially in
00:24:27the modern world, which does not necessarily value
00:24:29such values,
00:24:33but I have also known Andrzej for quite a long time and I understand him perfectly, what
00:24:37it means, on the one hand, of course, there are two wolves in me, one wolf that says that he
00:24:40should stay here and it would be much better if he stayed, but this is
00:24:44a personal wolf, because I really wouldn't want any
00:24:48harm to come to him, and...
00:24:51however, from the perspective of the Belarusian state, of which he is a citizen, he feels
00:24:55part of it, from the perspective of caring for the interests
00:24:58of the Polish minority, from the perspective of thinking that after all,
00:25:02if such people cannot act in any way in Belarus,
00:25:06then nothing will ever change there, so I don't blame him for wanting to return to his country.
00:25:30And please forgive my boldness, Mr. Andrzej, do you really want to return to
00:25:33Belarus? I will return,
00:25:37I will return, I just think there are chances that they won't arrest me,
00:25:40at least not right away, and maybe, well, nobody knows what will happen,
00:25:44really, the fact that the Belarusian authorities know
00:25:47exactly that, firstly, I didn't ask for it,
00:26:25good day, Mr. President, I have already had the honor of being here, if you
00:26:28remember, once, I already have amnesia,
00:26:50I cordially welcome you, I am very happy
00:26:53that you still remember me, I admire
00:26:55you, but I also have some remarks, please don't
00:26:59be offended, of course, because I wish you success.
00:27:04it's just that to achieve success,
00:27:07you also need to conserve yourself, you
00:27:09must have a concept, do you want to win, or do you want to
00:27:13let others win, you have already
00:27:16built a good reputation, you have great trust
00:27:20and you cannot lose that, you must
00:27:23lead to victory, this is
00:27:25our hero Andrzej Poczobut, our unyielding Andrzej
00:27:29Poczobut. He is a calm
00:27:33man, stoic, but he knows
00:27:36his goal, he motivates himself to his cell and I
00:27:40think he is still, he was left in
00:27:432021, he is slowly moving forward and
00:27:46we need to make sure he reaches 25,
00:27:5026, and then he can make a decision, I would say that
00:27:54to him.
00:28:07"I have duties towards people, meaning no one pushes anyone forward,
00:28:11please understand that the people who followed
00:28:14us, the Union of Poles, from 2005, they are paying the price for it and
00:28:18have already paid a high price and will still
00:28:21pay, one simply does not have the moral right
00:28:25to abandon them, well, that's
00:28:28the truth, that it's not one
00:28:31person, two people.
00:29:32you survived, Andrzej, we are all truly rooting
00:29:35for you, stay healthy, don't give up,
00:29:38recover, I hope you have
00:29:41the support of all of us,
00:29:43right?
00:29:48Yes, I would like to dedicate, but I would like to dedicate,
00:29:52increasingly
00:29:53stranger,
00:30:00completely,
00:30:35more about family, about loved ones, here at this moment I often dream of
00:30:39prison, sometimes prison, sometimes that apparatus
00:30:43that there's something somewhere I have difficulties in that
00:30:46country of Belarus, as if I were there, that
00:30:50I am being detained and something bad is happening to me, I often
00:30:54do,
00:31:00it is totalitarianism.
00:31:53I am a journalist, I have been working for over 20 years, the only thing I
00:31:57have is my word, that has always been very important to me,
00:32:01if I write something and do something, well, that means I believe in it,
00:32:06here the conditions are changing, suddenly I have to change what
00:32:09I said, change my opinion, demonstrate subservience to
00:32:13the fact that it is
00:32:45it was spring too, how are you feeling? I feel very
00:32:48good, you have regained some strength after these five years
00:32:52in prison during these five months that have passed since your release,
00:32:55I think it's even visible, yes,
00:32:59that change is indeed visible, we are very happy about that. Mr. Andrzej, it's
00:33:03somewhat as you announced in the report, you returned to
00:33:06Belarus, but it's also somewhat different, because it turned out that
00:33:09after a short stay in Belarus, you returned to
00:33:13Poland, does that mean your plans...
00:33:24My plans haven't changed, it's about a trip to the United
00:33:28States, simply, various organizational
00:33:31matters had to be settled, it
00:33:34required me to be present
00:33:37in Warsaw, and that caused a faster
00:33:41departure than was planned, so you...
00:33:57Of course, there are various issues,
00:34:00which means, well, you know, I'm writing
00:34:04a book and I will be working on the book, and that's what I'll
00:34:07focus on after returning from the United States, that's
00:34:11actually the most important thing I want to do now.
00:34:15Can you reveal what the book will be about, or my story? Well,
00:34:18it's natural that there's an internal need
00:34:22to tell this story from beginning to
00:34:25end, it's about even the longest interview
00:34:29doesn't allow you to tell everything that happened during those
00:34:33five years, and a book is a
00:34:36form that allows you to do that, and what about
00:34:39the idea of returning to Belarus, your family, what about
00:34:43your wife, what about your parents? What about the children too? Well,
00:34:47certainly there were no
00:34:49enthusiasts
00:34:52among my loved ones for this idea
00:34:55of mine, but everyone also
00:34:59accepted it, it is natural that no one
00:35:02wants someone, for a loved one, to be in a dangerous
00:35:06situation, but I just want to remind you that in Belarus,
00:35:10hundreds of thousands of Poles are in such a situation, all the activists of the Union
00:35:14of Poles who continue their activity in
00:35:17Belarus, so my situation, my return is not
00:35:21something so exceptional. The authorities
00:35:24of Belarus guaranteed you that you would be
00:35:27able to return to Belarus, but they didn't guarantee that you would
00:35:30have peace, that you would be able to resume your former activity,
00:35:34how did they react to your return? Well,
00:35:38they reacted as the Belarusian authorities react,
00:35:42well, when I handed over my passport for
00:35:45inspection, of course, I understand that all the red
00:35:49lights went on, I was summoned for an interview
00:35:52by a border guard officer, well, they tried
00:35:56to get me to unlock my phone,
00:35:59so they would have access to the content on my phone, well, I
00:36:03didn't agree, but it wasn't any special
00:36:07pressure or anything special, this
00:36:10whole conversation lasted about
00:36:1310 minutes, the officer came in, went out,
00:36:16answered, answered cell
00:36:19phones, and then I was told that I could go, so I
00:36:22went, and then, during my stay, did anyone else contact
00:36:26you, or? Yes, when
00:36:28I returned home, literally after five
00:36:31minutes, an officer appeared, well-informed,
00:36:34a major, with a recorder on, and who,
00:36:38what, where, when, why, such a
00:36:41kind of questions,
00:36:44later, like, he told me it was routine and that he
00:36:48checks everyone who lives in this
00:36:51class, but before, when you lived there, were there such
00:36:55routine checks, for someone to check no,
00:36:58absolutely not After, I mean,
00:37:02I said goodbye to him, after a few minutes he came back, this
00:37:05time he didn't have the recorder on and said that at 12:00 PM on
00:37:09Thursday, the conversation was on Tuesday, I was to report to the police
00:37:13station, as a person who is sentenced in Belarus,
00:37:15well, I have a duty within, I think, five
00:37:19years, regularly, if the services
00:37:23call, to report to the
00:37:25call and give
00:37:37on Wednesday I visited the Consulate General in Grodno, and when I left the consulate, my wife
00:37:41called, that the police had called
00:37:44home, saying that there was no need for me to come
00:37:48anymore, aren't you afraid that now the Belarusian authorities will decide
00:37:52that they have actually fulfilled this promise,
00:37:55they have fulfilled it, and let you into
00:37:58the country, so this agreement with the Polish side,
00:38:02with the American side, has been realized, but it was said
00:38:06that they would let you in, but it was not said how many times
00:38:09they would let you in, that there would simply not be another time, that now you will get a travel
00:38:13ban, I mean, I don't know how the Belarusian authorities will behave, I think
00:38:17that the Belarusian authorities also don't really know how they will behave, because
00:38:21the situation is dynamic, we see that the war
00:38:24in Ukraine is still going on, which affects the entire region. In addition,
00:38:28on September 16, as a result of negotiations with the
00:38:31Lukashenko regime, which are being conducted by President
00:38:35Trump's administration, 25 political
00:38:38prisoners were released, there are different signals, there are different
00:38:41versions of how the fate of Belarus will unfold
00:38:44generally, because this situation should be considered in such
00:38:48categories, and of course, but you were leaving among other things because
00:38:52the Congress of the Union of Poles in Belarus was supposed
00:38:55to take place, it was canceled and as reported. Well, officially it was canceled for
00:38:59security reasons, so I understand that the
00:39:02union was not entirely sure that the members
00:39:05well could safely come to
00:39:09this, I mean, generally, the union was absolutely sure that
00:39:12it would not be safe if
00:39:16the congress took place, but the authorities
00:39:19saw that my arrival does not pose any
00:39:23threat to the system of power within Belarus, that
00:39:26trade unionists... it's not about
00:39:29political struggle, it's about Polishness, it's about learning the Polish language,
00:39:33it's about, it's about the development of Polish culture, caring
00:39:37for places of national memory, and that's it, well,
00:39:40from more or less 22 at the turn
00:39:43of 23, this space of freedom, which
00:39:46the Union of Poles fought for, well, it is static and
00:39:50it does not decrease, and during this stay, did you meet
00:39:54with activists of the Belarusian Polonia? What
00:39:58are their moods and whether this information that
00:40:01you are not staying permanently
00:40:05in some way, well, did it make them sad or happy, or would they prefer you to have
00:40:09returned permanently? I mean, people interpreted, I mean,
00:40:12Poles in Belarus interpreted my
00:40:15visit as such a positive signal that
00:40:18the situation could improve and it was
00:40:22interpreted that way, well, everyone understood that this
00:40:25visit would not have been...
00:40:27possible if the authorities had planned some kind of harsh
00:40:31minority, so such rather
00:40:35optimistic moods are prevailing at the moment, meaning
00:40:38moderate optimism, because there are so many unknowns, we don't
00:40:42know if Russia will carry out mobilization, we don't know if
00:40:45Russia will want to use the territory of Belarus for the war
00:40:49against Ukraine, we don't know if the territory of Belarus will not be used for
00:40:52provocations against neighbors and so
00:40:56on, there are many unknowns. But along with that, this signal is not being underestimated
00:40:59by the Polish minority, how would that affect
00:41:03the situation of Poles, if such an escalation of the conflict were to occur, if
00:41:07Belarus were to openly become a party to this conflict? I mean,
00:41:10if this war generally negatively affects
00:41:13the internal situation of the country, by intensifying repression,
00:41:17strengthening security services and in turn, from the
00:41:20West, Belarus is also viewed as an ally of
00:41:24Russia, which Belarus factually is.
00:41:27The situation is perceived primarily in terms of security
00:41:31and threat, well, that is something
00:41:34that negatively affects the situation of
00:41:37the Polish minority. Currently, there are still
00:41:41about 800 or 900
00:41:44prisoners recognized as political prisoners in Belarus, well, these
00:41:48are not Polonia activists, but still Belarusian
00:41:51citizens are in prisons, do such actions, which
00:41:55also took place in your defense here in Poland, support actions,
00:41:59expressions of, well,
00:42:01appreciation for what you do, coming from Poland, from other
00:42:05countries, do they help prisoners? Generally, Poles in Belarus don't
00:42:09like Polonia, because Polonia are people who
00:42:13left, no one left us, they stayed on
00:42:16their land here, the Polish border left, as they say,
00:42:19so that's that, a if it comes to political
00:42:23prisoners, their number is much higher, when I was in the camp,
00:42:27well, I saw dozens of people who are not
00:42:30on any lists of human rights
00:42:33defenders, the point is that families were afraid
00:42:36that publicizing their cases
00:42:40would negatively affect the situation of the imprisoned person, meaning
00:42:44they would have it worse in the camp, and the situation
00:42:48of the family itself, so this number of
00:42:51800-900 is very arbitrary, in my opinion,
00:42:55in addition, such a very
00:42:58dangerous tendency is
00:43:01the fact that negotiations are ongoing and it's very
00:43:05good that Americans have managed in these five years, only Americans
00:43:08have managed to lead to
00:43:11the release of political prisoners, it's very
00:43:15good that this is happening, but at the same time, arrests are ongoing
00:43:18and some are released, others are imprisoned
00:43:22and this level of fear in society is still maintained,
00:43:25this is a great challenge that stands before
00:43:29these diplomats who are conducting dialogue with Lukashenka, so that this
00:43:32situation improves within Belarus, and
00:43:36aren't you afraid that the consequences of your future actions? Scars
00:43:40somewhere deep down, well, they
00:43:51are there, but the essence of the matter, well,
00:43:54one can never rule out a black
00:43:57scenario, but, well, there are also
00:44:00reasons to believe that not necessarily
00:44:03everything has to develop precisely in the direction of repression and
00:44:06in the direction of worsening the situation, the point is that
00:44:10the Lukashenka regime showed a certain cyclical behavior,
00:44:14meaning, when he felt threatened, then
00:44:17repression was strengthened, there was greater pressure, people were put in
00:44:20prisons, and then the opinion of the West played no role for
00:44:24Lukashenka, but when the situation was stable,
00:44:27talking to the Americans, Lukashenka boasted that the situation was stable and
00:44:31that he fully controlled the situation inside Belarus, that's true, well, I
00:44:35was in Belarus, I saw it and felt that the situation
00:44:38was completely under control. by the regime, well,
00:44:42in this situation, the economy comes
00:44:45to the fore, and the regime of Alexander Lukashenka is
00:44:49interested in economic cooperation with the West,
00:44:52which in turn forces
00:44:55such, well, understanding or a more careful
00:44:58approach to these
00:45:01issues that are important to the West, but again
00:45:04you avoided global issues, you avoided
00:45:08the question about yourself, do you currently
00:45:12still return to what happened
00:45:15in prison, does it still come back in nightmares?
00:45:18I mean, when I crossed the border and found myself
00:45:22in a room with three gloomy gentlemen, it seemed to me for
00:45:26a moment that those 130 something
00:45:29days I was free, that it was all a
00:45:32dream, that I was still where I
00:45:35was, so undoubtedly this
00:45:39state
00:45:48We wish you then that this dream of freedom lasts as long as possible, and that those
00:45:51nightmares never return. Thank you very much for
00:45:54the conversation. Thank you. And I encourage you to watch the next
00:45:58episodes.