Ahead of the 2023 parliamentary “elections” in Belarus, the YLC launched a project titled “The Right to Choose”. Initially presented as a civic legal education initiative, the project’s true focus quickly became apparent: the first 14 episodes dealt exclusively with prohibitions, and with the criminal and administrative liability of citizens for offences related to voting, participation in public gatherings, “obstructing” election commissions, or posting critical views on social media. Rather than informing the public of their rights — such as freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, or the right to demand fair vote counting — attorneys used the project to intimidate citizens with prison sentences for actions commonly associated with civic engagement, which the state has reclassified as crimes.
With the "elections" scheduled for 26 January in an environment where Belarusians have no genuine opportunity to cast a vote that will be counted, the YLC continues to employ scare tactics. For instance, in a recent episode, members of the Brest Regional Bar’s YLC “reminded” viewers of liability for “disseminating Nazi and extremist ideas”.
But beyond these standard fear-based posts warning of penalties for, say, taking a photo of your ballot, the YLC proudly announced a collaboration with GUBOPiK as part of The Right to Choose project.
GUBOPiK (Main Directorate for Combating Organised Crime and Corruption) is a state security body that, after the mass protests of 2020, morphed into a repressive apparatus. Thousands of individuals who spoke out against dictatorship or Russia’s war against Ukraine have passed through its hands. GUBOPiK is known for its degrading practice of producing “repentant videos”, in which detainees — visibly bruised and clearly under pressure — “admit” to crimes. These videos often include footage of private messages and intimate personal details, blatantly violating the right to privacy.
Nevertheless, in one episode of The Right to Choose, following a chirpy introduction by GUBOPiK propagandist Tatiana Tretyak, YLC Chair Olga Kalina smiles as she explains the legal consequences of “extremism”. The video ends with the caption: “Exercise your right to choose — in favor of obeying the law”.

In 2020, Tatiana Tretyak began working at Minskaya Pravda (the main state-owned print newspaper of the Minsk region), and later became a news anchor for GUBOPiK. In her broadcasts, the propagandist regularly expresses contempt for Belarusian culture and language, democratic values, and those who defend them. Her chauvinistic remarks are typically followed by footage of detainees apprehended by GUBOPiK officers — often visibly bearing signs of beatings.
However, not everyone welcomed this collaboration:

Following Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s statement that he would run in the upcoming elections “if his supporters say it’s needed — and of course they will”, state propaganda swiftly launched a new campaign around the slogan “NADO!” (It’s needed!).
For weeks, videos flooded the media showing staff from public institutions — schools, universities, and government bodies — shouting the word “NADO”. Members of the Young Lawyers Council  eagerly joined the flash mob, publicly expressing their support for the continuation of Lukashenka’s 30-year rule. It is already clear who will be awarded the prearranged 80% of “support.” Yet through this participation — sometimes coerced, sometimes unconscious — a false image of popular admiration is constructed for a regime that has legislatively and practically (through torture, arrests, searches, prison sentences, and even deaths in custody) dismantled the rights and freedoms of Belarusians, persecuted opponents, and created an atmosphere of fear and oppression.
Freely participating in campaign events to support a candidate can’t be inherently condemnable. It is a legitimate form of civic engagement and falls under electoral rights and freedom of expression. However, this particular case involves attorneys — attorneys who work directly with families and victims of the mass repressions carried out by the state. Attorney’s foremost responsibility is to their client and the trust placed in them.
One can only imagine a scenario in which an attorney, in between court hearings for a client detained for criticising the regime, records a video message addressing Lukashenka and claiming that he must run for a seventh term. This behavioural pattern — especially among young attorneys (and not just YLC, but also BRBA as a whole) — undermines not only the prestige of the legal profession as an institution, but also their personal credibility in the eyes of those in desperate need of legal defence.
It’s also worth recalling that since 2020, the bar has undergone active “cleansings” — removing attorneys who held alternative views or defended clients with dissenting opinions. Lukashenka’s opponents have no safe channel to express perspectives that differ from the state-approved narrative. While participants in the state-run “NADO” flash mob are celebrated for painting the word on pavement in official videos, Belarusians who painted slogans and murals after 2020 — such as “Leave,” “3%,” “Long live Belarus,” and “We will not forget” — received severe prison sentences.

In 2022, the first public statements emerged making it clear that the legal profession in Belarus was now being regarded as a part of the state apparatus. On 21 April 2022, during a briefing with the Minister of Justice Sergey Khomenko, Aliaksandr Lukashenka stated: “The legal profession must be under control, but it must operate according to the law and be a real legal profession. An attorney must perform their duties without fear, but at the same time, we must understand: this is a state person. Their actions must be based on legal norms, not invented ones — like freedom of speech and other so-called freedoms. We’ve had enough of this freedom. Thank God, we’ve seen the kind of ‘freedom’ they want to bring here.”
In June, in his address to the legal community on the Day of the Bar, the then-Minister of Justice Sergey Khomenko reinforced this message, calling attorneys “state people”: “Today, the justice system is unimaginable without professional defence in criminal and civil proceedings. As state people, you stand guard over the lawful interests of citizens and legal entities.”
These statements contradict internationally accepted standards of legal practice, which prohibit interference by ministries of justice and the state in the work of the legal profession, and go against the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.
This position continues to be actively promoted. In December 2024, Minsk hosted the Second Forum of Young Attorneys of Belarus, attended by high-ranking officials such as Olga Chupris (Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration), Yevgeny Kovalenko (current Minister of Justice), as well as numerous attorneys and legal professionals. Olga Kalina, Chair of the Young Lawyers Council, spoke at the forum about the YLC’s projects during the 2025 electoral campaign period. She stated: “An attorney is a state person. Given the growing volume of information threats against our country, it is especially important and necessary to engage in competent, systematic legal education that is accessible and trustworthy. This is precisely what young attorneys are doing through our projects — while also fostering in themselves a sense of personal responsibility for Belarus’s future. We, the young attorneys of Belarus, support the course of our stateand are ready to actively contribute to its development. Youth participation in elections is our investment in Belarus’s future — a future that depends on us!”
At the same forum, Olga Chupris declared that “the role of the attorney is changing in today’s world. He is not only a defender of the individual, but also an advocate for the interests of their country.” According to her, members of the legal profession should be ready to join the ranks of public authorities. “Those starting their legal careers are already actively involved in the country’s political life, including during the electoral campaign — raising legal awareness and countering destructive external influences.”
She went on to ask rhetorically: “Who, if not attorneys, are best equipped to explain to people the meaning of our laws, our Constitution, the decisions being made in our country? To do so from a state standpoint, in a way that allows us all to live well in our calm and peaceful country. That’s why I urge all of you to go to the polls on 26 January — together with your families”.

On 2 December, the Belarusian Republican Bar Association and the Republican Public Association Belaya Rus signed a cooperation agreement. It’s worth recalling that in March 2023, Belaya Rus was transformed into a political party, whose core mission is to support the policies of Aliaksandr Lukashenka. Its ideological platform is “based on the ideology of the Belarusian state”. The Association’s chair, Oleg Romanov, has publicly expressed nostalgia for the Soviet Union, criticised Western liberal-democratic values (especially in the context of Belarus), and advocated for deep integration between Belarus and the Russian Federation. Romanov’s tenure as rector of Polotsk State University is also associated with the onset of targeted repression against students and faculty who opposed the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Over the past few years, the Belarusian legal profession has been facing — and continues to face — serious challenges regarding access to legal aid. In some district legal consultation offices, there is only one lawyer available — or sometimes none at all. This crisis stems from the reform of the legal profession, the mass departure of lawyers, and the systematic expulsion of legal professionals by both the BRBA and the Ministry of Justice.
In this context, it’s only fair to acknowledge one benefit: after the signing of the agreement between the BRBA and Belaya Rus, free legal consultations were introduced as a weekly campaign at Belaya Rus public reception offices.
The problem, however, lies in what kind of atmosphere these consultations create: citizens must seriously consider what kind of information they share with an attorney in this setting. In Belarus, confidentiality has been repeatedly violated by state actors in various forms — and in the offices of a political organisation that openly supports the ruling regime, there should be no expectation of client-lawyer privilege. Moreover, announcements for these legal consultations include the following statement:
“During the attorneys thematic consultations, every citizen will have the opportunity to sign in support ofAliaksandr Lukashenka as a presidential candidate and to submit proposals for improving various areas of social and public life.” In other words, attorneys hosting these events in Belaya Rus offices should expect to see predominantly politically aligned clients — and citizens attending these sessions should be mindful of what they share, with whom, and in what context.

During preparations for the widely criticised 2024 elections in Belarus, attorneys visited schools, universities, and workplaces, actively participating in the creation and promotion of state-approved narratives, including legal liability for “extremism” — a term that, under current Belarusian law, encompasses peaceful exercise of the freedoms of association, speech, and electoral rights.
Chairs of the Young Lawyers Council have repeatedly acted as public faces of the legal profession, conveying messages of loyalty to the state and increasingly confirming the loss of independence of the legal profession and its growing subordination to state authorities.
This practice continues in the lead-up to the January 2025 presidential “elections.” As described earlier, nearly all so-called legal awareness events focus exclusively on obligations and liabilities, without mentioning citizens’ rights or freedoms. This serves to further narrow the space for civil liberties, while those tasked with defending rights actively refrain from doing so. The right to legal defence is being thus silently disabled for vast groups of Belarusians. It’s difficult to imagine how an attorney can, on one day, deliver a talk on “combating extremism” without reference to international human rights standards, and the next, defend someone charged for reposting content from five years ago. By promoting narratives that justify the state’s arbitrary and unlimited legislative powers, the legal community is also discouraging independent legal thinking.
On average, at least 20 such outreach events are held each month, where attorneys — sometimes accompanied by local police officers — lecture schoolchildren and workers about criminal and administrative liability for “violating electoral legislation” and “extremism.”

The young attorneys of the Mogilev Regional Bar Association produced a documentary on the history of elections and electoral campaigns in Belarus titled “Time to Choose.” The narrative focuses on citing legal provisions and chronologically highlighting amendments made to the electoral code in connection with various elections.
Remarkably, the film — created by attorneys, professionals whose vocation is to defend citizens’ violated rights — does not mention a single case of state-led electoral violations in previous years, nor does it refer to how the very amendments it quotes were used to systematically undermine the electoral rights of Belarusians.
The tone of the film shifts noticeably when it reaches the year 2020. The previously dry narration gives way to emotional commentary. Pavel Dubovik, a 42-year-old member of the Young Lawyers Council, declares:
“On 9 August, another presidential election took place in the Republic of Belarus, where Aliaksandr Grigoryevich Lukashenka secured a confident victory with 80.1% of the vote… The independent and sovereign policies of the state and the President were not to the liking of many in the West… Many so-called democratic countries [editor’s note: pronounced with an emphatic, rolling ‘r’] objected to amendments to the Belarusian electoral code, effective since 7 September 2015, which prohibited direct or indirect financing of election campaigns by foreign individuals — significantly hindering foreign influence on our elections. Nonetheless, both before and after the 2020 election, a full-fledged hybrid war was unleashed against us to undermine our statehood and public stability. Alongside sanctions aimed at causing economic damage, there were also direct military threats, political pressure, societal destabilisation tactics, and psychological-information warfare. It was a deliberate and coordinated plan to destroy the Belarusian state and its socio-political model.”
“This external influence manifested in illegal demonstrations and radicalised destructive elements trying to trigger a colour revolution and create another ‘Maidan’ like in Ukraine. We can clearly see the consequences of such Maidans and foreign interference in the affairs of sovereign states when we look at our southern neighbour.”

“However, thanks to the clear and timely actions of the authorities, and the unity of a society willing to defend its choice, the attempted coup failed. The constitutional order and the people's sovereign right to self-determination — free from foreign influence — were upheld through amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus and the enhanced role of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly.”
Attorney Pavel Dubovik does not shy away from using propaganda-laden phrases like “destructive West,” “radicalised elements,” and “another Maidan,” widely used by state media to promote pro-government narratives. His reference to “clear and timely actions of the authorities” is presumably a euphemism for the use of torture against protesters, 10-year prison sentences for attorneys performing their professional duties, and deaths in custody.
Attorney Sviatlana Romanenko adds:
“Belarusians are a wise and peaceful people who have repeatedly shown their ability to make the right choice. Thanks to our wise decisions, we have avoided the hardships that are currently shaking and destroying Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova… By choosing our president wisely and responsibly, we are choosing peaceful skies over our heads and safety for our loved ones.”

The film concludes with the message: “All attorneys must go to the polls — to set an example of fulfilling their civic duty in the upcoming election campaign.”

The Young Lawyers Council of the Belarusian Republican Bar Association regularly publishes interviews or reposts content from official Telegram channels such as that of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) or “Pul Pervogo” (The President’s Pool). These sources often contain language that degrades the dignity of Belarusian citizens, contradicts the very concept of human rights, and frequently includes hate speech — as was the case in joint projects with GUBOPiK, for example.
One of the most recent examples of such reposting is shown below. As can be seen, young attorneys are publicly sharing content under their own names that includes false and inflammatory statements intended to intimidate the Belarusian public. Unfortunately, there is currently no indication that this trend is slowing down.