"In the family, everyone speaks their native language." Founder of Belarusian initiative "HODNA" married Ukrainian YouTuber

Photo: interviewee's archive

Alina says she met her future husband at a working meeting in November 2024. It was a visit to Ukraine where Belarusian bloggers exchanged experiences with Ukrainian colleagues.

Andrei Kapranov, her future husband, was at that meeting as part of the Ukrainian side. He is one of the producers of the YouTube channel "named after T.G. Shevchenko", one of the largest Ukrainian history channels, with almost a million subscribers:

"It so happened that our first conversations were about this, as we met with various YouTubers precisely for this purpose. It's a channel about the history of Ukraine, and one of the reasons it was launched was to strengthen Ukrainian national identity, while 'HODNA' deals with Belarusian national identity."

Initially, Alina and Andrei communicated professionally — they planned projects together, discussed language and culture. But then Donald Trump came to power in the USA, and non-profit projects were left without American assistance. Some projects, Alina says, closed, and she and Andrei began to build more personal relationships.

Alina recounts an episode when she first realized how much she and Andrei had in common:

"One day we were talking about how Russia destroys the language, culture, and identity of our peoples, and how important it is in public work to highlight how Russia does this. And when you learn more about how this destruction happens, you no longer want to consume Russian culture.

Павялічыць

Photo: interviewee's archive

We were discussing this — and then we almost simultaneously said that it's important to talk about this in our native language. We were very aligned in these values."

"Andrei is very caring; we agree on values, which is very important. We work and spend time together, which brings us closer. The fact that we are in Ukraine also contributes to this closeness.

Since Andrei works with Ukrainian culture and I work with Belarusian, we compare them. We have family discussions, we share Ostrozky, we learn about common historical moments, diplomatic relations between the BPR and UPR. These things bring us closer."

On October 10, 2025, Alina's birthday, Andrei proposed to her. The wedding took place a few days ago in Kyiv. There were no problems because the bride is Belarusian — Alina only needed a valid Ukrainian residence permit.

The marriage was registered in Podil:

"We registered our marriage at the registry office which was hit by a Shahed drone in October, meaning part of the building was damaged. And we celebrated the wedding in a restaurant where a fire broke out due to shelling and power outages, it happened literally two-three weeks before the wedding.

Павялічыць

Photo: interviewee's archive

[The staff] did everything possible to make our wedding happen. Everything was running on generators, they brought a potbelly stove to heat the room. Such an authentic Ukrainian wedding…"

So far, Alina and Andrei haven't gone on a honeymoon — apparently, there's a lot of work. But they plan to catch up on their honeymoon when it gets a bit warmer.

Alina specifically notes that both she and Andrei speak their respective native languages in the family:

"Andrei periodically corrects me when I use Ukrainian words instead of Belarusian ones, taking care of the purity of the Belarusian language.

When we were just starting our relationship, I asked him why he was interested in working with Belarus. His answer was very interesting and convincing to me; I had never thought about it. Andrei said that we have a 1084-kilometer common border, and it is important for Ukrainians to work with Belarus because they don't want it to be a border with Russia. We don't want that either."

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