Natalia Kalegova spoke about aid to Belarusian refugees, her family, her attitude towards Tsikhanouskaya. And explained who "beavers" and "hares" are

In Vilnius, there is a house that has long been simply called the Castle in the Belarusian community. With sharp roofs, tall windows, a round fountain in front of the entrance, and large flags on the facade: Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. Below – a large inscription Dapamoga.

Natalia Kalegova drives up to the Castle in her car. In a light trench coat, with a short haircut, quick and precise in her movements, she immediately enters the courtyard as if returning to a place that constantly runs on her inner engine.

Павялічыць

She barely has time to enter the house before she begins to see everything: who is standing where, who is carrying what, who needs whom.

Inside, the Castle is not at all like a sterile social institution. In the foyer, there are orange walls, leather sofas, a lamp in the mirrored ceiling, tiled floor, boxes, belongings, photographs, flags, trifles that accumulate only in a lively home. Previously, it was the house of a Gypsy baron, so the interior partially retained the corresponding local flavor.

Kalegova walks through the rooms: she greets everyone she meets by name, smiles, asks something, instructs something.

Павялічыць

On the first floor — the kitchen. Three women are cooking dinner there.

— I'm dreaming here about how to get shoes for Lyosha, — says mentor Olga. — It's hard for him to walk in what he has.

— You need to write in the mentors' chat right now, — Natalia immediately interjects. — "People, shoes are needed."

Next to her is Oksana. Natalia explains: she is the mother of a former political prisoner, one of the Castle's caretakers, who is responsible "for our stomachs." The kitchen smells of food, coffee, and a certain domestic care.

— Do you know who "beavers" and "bunnies" are? — they suddenly ask me.

— No.

— Ah, well, you'll find out soon, — the girls smile mysteriously.

Natalia constantly switches from one task to another, but completely controls everything happening around her. We go up to the second floor.

— How many people do you have here now?

— It varies. Now it's 15. But sometimes it's up to 30, though that's already uncomfortable. Optimal is 20.

We enter the meeting hall. Performances, living rooms, and psychological sessions take place here. Sometimes, Kalegova says, people also live here.

The large hall looks strange and ceremonial: blue walls, a high ceiling painting, round floor decor — and in the midst of it all, a huge camouflage net stretched out, for Ukraine. As if the war entered the former palace and remained here as daily handiwork.

Павялічыць

Suddenly, a man's voice is heard:

— Natasha! Hello!

The man we meet in the corridor is Nikolai Kuleshov, a former customs officer and political prisoner. Just as we arrived, he is going to a psychotherapist. In the Castle, psychological help is as much a part of daily life as the kitchen or a bed.

— We won't go to the third floor, boys live there, — says Natalia.

In one of the rooms, there is a place for activities. Massages are done here, a girl who does manicures comes. On the walls are drawings. Among them is a portrait of Kalegova herself.

— Is this your portrait they drew?

— Yes. I don't like that. A cult of personality is not my thing. But I gratefully accept it as the creativity of our former beneficiaries.

In the painting, Natalia is still a brunette. She holds a bunny in her hands, behind her are beavers, storks, a fox. These are not just animals. A "stork," for example, is a guy who flew across the border on a paraglider. A "beaver" is a person who crosses the border by swimming across a river. A "bunny" runs through the forests. The guy who drew all this is now at war.

Павялічыць

Next to it is an icon of Saint Panteleimon. It was gifted by one of the refugees who later flew to America.

We enter a room with a large round table. Natalia shows a guestbook with photos of guests and meetings held in the Castle. Viktor Babariko, Pavel Seviarynets have been here; guests leave their signatures in this book. Natalia doesn't have her own office — she says this almost in passing. And it seems true: her office is the entire Castle.

Павялічыць

“Either accept the rules, or leave”

Natalia Kalegova moved to Lithuania back in 2000. She is originally from Minsk, a chemist by education. She graduated from the Chemistry Faculty of BSU, studied in postgraduate school, and worked at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Academy of Sciences. It seemed her life would be connected with science. But the 1990s began:

— I never thought I would do business. I remember a friend suggested: "Let's go trade flowers." And I replied: "No, that's not me. I'm a scientific person."

Life decided otherwise. The family already had a child, and the scientific salary wasn't enough. One day, an acquaintance called and said that an entire wagon of fabric was going to waste in Lithuania. Natalia already had relatives there: her sister had married a Lithuanian in 1984 and moved to Vilnius. That's how she got into business.

— After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all connections fell apart. Somewhere warehouses were overflowing with goods, and somewhere there was a catastrophic shortage. And your task was simply to find out who needed whom. I was such an intermediary who knew everything. I remember my theoretical physics professor once came to me, when I was already in business, and said: "You know what the main value of a university education is? We don't care what problem to solve." And that's really true. You immediately see the whole scheme completely. The brain works differently.

She remembers her first serious earnings down to the smallest detail:

— It was the early nineties. We went to the savings bank to get money, and they brought out a whole diplomat case full of banknotes. My partner at the time and I left the bank, walked to Dinamo Stadium, sat on a bench, and just stayed silent. We sat with that diplomat case and thought: "And what do we do with all this now?" At that moment, I felt for the first time: life could be different.

Later there were fabric supplies, work with "Milavitsa", production projects, a sawmill. One of the first successful projects was a business with "Haryzont" televisions. Natalia purchased incomplete televisions, which were sent to Smolensk, where they were manually brought to a finished state. After that, the televisions were sold, and by the mid-1990s, this was a very profitable direction.

— For several more years, I worked part-time, trying to combine business with science. But it gradually became clear that business required more and more time. I was twenty-four years old, and I already had to take care of my son alone. And by the age of twenty-eight, my business was quite firmly on its feet. Then I already clearly understood that I had made the right choice.

The business developed successfully, but, according to Natalia, the mid-1990s became a turning point.

She recalls a family story. In 1994, her cousin, a successful businessman, almost threw a man down the stairs who came to a meeting of entrepreneurs and started shouting that "businessmen are ticks on the body of the state." The conflict was then managed to be stopped, and a few months later, acquaintances called her brother: "Remember that man? You shouldn't have wanted to throw him down the stairs. Now he is our president." Soon he urgently left Belarus. Today he is no longer alive, but, according to Natalia, he believed until the end: Belarus can still change.

— Before Lukashenka, everything developed very quickly. But then everything changed. I saw how people with whom we started business together disappeared one by one. Someone ended up in prison, someone left, someone submitted to Lukashenka, and someone disappeared without a trace. I understood: either accept these rules or leave.

She chose the latter. Her then-future husband persuaded her to move to Lithuania. The move was not easy:

— I loved Minsk very much. For me, leaving was like shedding my own skin.

In Vilnius, Natalia first got into genealogy, spending hours in archives, researching her family history. Then she sold her apartment in Minsk and, together with her husband, an architectural designer, opened a network of apartments for people coming to Lithuania. These very apartments would unexpectedly become the first shelter for Belarusians fleeing repression twenty years later.

Before 2020, Natalia Kalegova hardly participated in Belarusian public life:

— When I first left, I was very emotional. I told friends: "How can you live under Lukashenka?" And they replied: "You are abroad now. It's easy for you to speculate. But we have to live here." After that conversation, I just shut my mouth. I decided I had no right to teach people when I myself had left.

For almost two decades, Natalia Kalegova lived her own life: family, business, friends, Lithuania. But everything changed in the summer of 2020.

How "Dapamoga" Began

When the presidential campaign began in Belarus, Natalia admits that at first she didn't expect anything unusual:

— When Siarhei Tsikhanouski was imprisoned, I thought: well, another candidate was imprisoned. I also told my husband: "Nothing changes in Belarus, everything is according to the old scheme."

But then she saw the queues at Viktor Babariko's pickets and how Belarusians helped each other:

— I didn't care who these people were standing for. The main thing for me was something else — they came out at all. And I suddenly saw that sincere, real Minsk that I once loved very much.

On August 9, she went to vote at the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius. The queue stretched for almost ten hours, but everything was so slow that only 120 people voted. About a thousand people could not vote, some of them had specially come from Klaipėda.

— We brought people water, pizza, supported each other, conducted our own poll on who voted for whom. And when the next day I opened the news and saw "80% for Lukashenka," my first thought was: "What kind of pears are on a willow tree?" It was such an obvious lie that it was simply impossible to believe.

After the first killings of protesters, Belarusians began coming to the Vilnius embassy with flowers and candles. When the police asked them to disperse, Natalia herself went to talk to the law enforcement officers:

— I said: when a plane crashes somewhere, people also bring flowers to embassies. This is not politics, this is human compassion.

As a result, Lithuanian police advised obtaining a permit from the city hall. Thus, "Varta Svyatla" (Guard of Light) emerged, which continues to operate today: Belarusians light vigil lamps next to portraits of victims of Lukashenka's regime and fallen Belarusian warriors in Ukraine near the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius.

But this was just the beginning:

— At the end of August 2020, Belarusians who wanted to come to Lithuania called us. They said: "They offer us to seek asylum, but we don't want to. We think it's temporary. We just need to wait it out in Lithuania."

At that moment, Lithuanian law already allowed humanitarian entry, but the mechanism for its application did not yet exist. Coincidence helped. After one of the rallies, journalists introduced Natalia to the leadership of the Migration Department. Soon, those same Belarusians called her: they were eventually allowed into the country. It later turned out that the head of the border outpost found them himself through Facebook:

— He remembered the people he had to refuse, found them and wrote: "Come, I will let you through." For me, this is a very characteristic story about Lithuanians.

Soon, at the initiative of Police Commissioner General Renatas Požėla, representatives of the border guard service, the Migration Department, customs, and other state institutions gathered at one table. Together they developed a mechanism according to which the humanitarian corridor began to operate.

By the end of 2020, through "Dapamoga" alone, according to Kalegova, about 320 Belarusians passed this way:

— Back then, people still didn't want to ask for political asylum. Almost everyone hoped that in a few weeks or months they would be able to return home. It seemed to me that my role in this would be limited to rallies and this kind of support. And then one day the phone rang. My assistant Natalia said: "Natalia Ivanovna, we have Belarusian refugees here." I didn't even immediately understand what to answer. I only remember my first reaction: "And what do I do with this now?" And she asked: "Please help them..."

There were three adults and two children. They crossed the border and found themselves in a house 90 km from Vilnius, where there was no electricity or water. At first, Natalia thought of simply renting them her apartments at a minimal cost:

— I went for them myself, picked them up, settled them in Vilnius. I asked how much money they had left. They replied: two hundred euros for the whole family. And then I said: "Alright, just live here for now."

A few days later, her phone wouldn't stop ringing. Women whose sons were released from Akrestsin Street prison passed her number to each other, called and pleaded: "Natalia, save my child." This is how what would later become the "Dapamoga" organization began.

Павялічыць

"I am ready to kneel before them"

Although mass escapes from Belarus no longer look like they did in 2020, people continue to seek help. Natalia repeats several times: there are no random people in this system:

— Now the verification is very serious. People know each other, can vouch for each other. If an unfamiliar person contacts me, I always clarify who gave them my contact.

Of course, she does not disclose the details of this work:

— There are things that are better left unsaid. This is already a matter of people's safety.

Instead, she speaks with great gratitude about the Lithuanian border guards. The day before our meeting, they rescued a Belarusian who had fallen into a diabetic coma. Similar stories happened before:

— There was a man who fell through the ice. He was rescued by border guards, medics. When after that I am told that Lithuanians don't like Belarusians, I simply cannot agree with that. I am ready to kneel before them.

One Room That Became a Castle

Initially, the refugees lived in apartments that Natalia and her husband had once opened for tourists. Very quickly, a team began to gather around her:

— One day, girls from my commercial company called me: "Natalia Ivanovna, why don't you take us?" I replied: "Because I have nothing to pay you with. And everything here is done for free." And they just said: "Well, we'll work for free then."

Many of them remain close even today:

— There were three Natalias. We jokingly called ourselves "three owls," because at night we practically didn't leave our phones. Some of them are now working on other projects, but still continue to help "Dapamoga." We are still together.

Volunteers and mentors began gathering around the organization. Natalia is confident: without this team, "Dapamoga" simply wouldn't exist.

— I wouldn't have done anything myself. "Dapamoga" is not Natalia Kalegova. It's a team, volunteers, and mentors. I might have just managed to bring everyone together. But they did everything else. They came up with the Welcome Pack — the first set of essential items and products a person receives immediately after arrival. They met people at the border, helped them settle in, supported them in the first days. Everything relies on such people.

Natalia says that "Dapamoga" has one rule that has never changed: if a person asks for help, they will receive it.

In 2021, her husband bought an old house in Vilnius, which once belonged to a Gypsy baron and was being sold after his death. Originally, there were completely different plans for this house:

— My husband bought this house hoping that I would take care of it, turn it into a hotel. This was our joint business, joint money. He thought that this house would distract me from Belarusian affairs, that I would switch to renovations, clients, a new project. But I asked: "Give me at least one room. People need somewhere to sleep."

Thus began the history of the Castle. The house was in disrepair; it had been empty for a long time after the death of its former owner:

— When we bought it, trees were growing right through the asphalt. We didn't do any major renovation, we just gradually restored what was necessary. One room, then a second, a third. Somewhere they painted the walls, somewhere people brought furniture. The house was literally restored by collective effort, the Belarusians themselves did it.

Natalia smiles as she recalls how everything happened:

— At first, one guy lived here. We jokingly called him a ghost. He later went to Ukraine. Then a second person appeared. Then a third. I didn't wake up thinking: "I will create a humanitarian organization." It's just that every day another person came. Someone needed a roof over their head. Someone needed to find a lawyer. Someone — medicine. I couldn't tell a person: "Wait, let me think if I want to do this now." How can I say that when he is already standing in front of me.

She pauses for a few seconds.

— And at some point, you realize that you can no longer go back.

— Why?

— Because you already know them by name.

On February 24, 2022, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the house, which was supposed to become a hotel, finally changed its purpose.

— My husband is a citizen of Lithuania. And all Lithuanians then strongly stood up for Ukraine. He said: "Well, I understand that we won't be making a hotel here for a long time now. Alright, engage in charity."

Meanwhile, Belarusian volunteers came to Natalia:

— They said: "Natalia Ivanovna, we will help Ukrainians." I replied: "I have neither the strength nor the money." They asked: "Can we do it ourselves?" I said: "The whole house is for you." People who had very recently been helped themselves began to help others. They already knew how the humanitarian corridor works, how to organize logistics, how to meet a person, where to find a car, how to accommodate people. I just watched and thought: now this is no longer my story. This is the story of Belarusians.

Павялічыць

"We all lacked empathy"

Alongside hundreds of stories of help, there was another side. In January 2021, a public campaign began against Natalia Kalegova, accusing her of profiting from Belarusians. She is convinced: it was a targeted attack. She attributes the main role in it to the ex-head of Bysol, Andrei Stryzhak.

— Articles came out saying that I was a Belarusian fraudster, that I allegedly took money from people, although I said I helped for free. This hit both the family business and my personal life then. My husband and I lost about 320 thousand euros because of this story.

Over time, she was able to restore normal relations with some representatives of Bysol.

— It doesn't hurt me anymore. I'm just stating it as a fact. No questions — we sit at a round table, we talk. If people want to continue helping, why shouldn't we do it together?

She speaks calmly about the lost money. More painful, she says, was something else:

— We were just beginning to build trust in Lithuania. And it turned out that not only I was slandered. Lithuanians don't bother figuring out who Natalia Kalegova is. They just think: if Belarusians fight among themselves like this, why should they help them? There was a wave of distrust. But in the same year, another moment occurred. For my birthday, Belarusians from the diaspora collected 600 euros. Today it seems like a small amount. But back then, this money allowed us to help people for several more months. For me, it was a sign: "We believe in you."

And five years later, by Natalia's anniversary in the spring of 2026, Belarusians had already collected about 12,000 euros as a gift for a retreat for former female political prisoners in the Canary Islands.

— I learned to separate the deed from the person. If a person makes a mistake — that doesn't mean they are bad. But, honestly, we all really lacked empathy then. We could have just sat down at one table and talked.

She pauses for a moment to think:

— I really don't want Belarusians to continue destroying each other. We still have to live together.

"The Castle can already live without me"

Over five years, "Dapamoga" ceased to be Natalia Kalegova's project. She speaks of this, it seems, with even greater joy than about everything else. Recently, she had to leave Lithuania for almost a month and a half:

— And you know what? The Castle continued to live. People were accepted, aid was working, everything was organized. For me, this is probably one of the most important results over these years. The system already works without me, and that's good.

Today, the Castle is no longer just a house where one can spend the night. Here, they help with documents, job and housing search, and adaptation in Lithuania. Each new person is assigned a mentor — a Belarusian who has already gone through this path and can help the "newcomers" take their first steps.

— I don't really like the word "shelter." It narrows the meaning too much. We are more of a help center and a community, — says Natalia.

According to her, about 2400 people have already passed through "Dapamoga".

— For the first month, a person lives for free. If they want to stay afterward, they start partially contributing to utility costs.

— But this is not a hostel where one can live indefinitely at a low cost. If you no longer need to worry about where to sleep today and how to pay for an apartment, help others. Come to our events or weave camouflage nets for Ukraine, help new refugees, support the community however you can. Because once upon a time, someone did it for you.

However, she adds, in the first days after arrival, no one demands anything from a person:

— Sometimes people arrive after prison, after interrogations, after a long journey. They simply have no strength. First, you need to let the person sleep, eat, and understand that they are safe. People are different. Some get involved immediately. Some move on and never appear again. I don't like to divide people into good and bad. Everyone has their own path.

"We don't live on grants"

In all these years, "Dapamoga" has not received a single grant:

— We tried to apply several times, but they gave us nothing. They say that a bad characterization of us remained after the hate campaign of 2021.

The Castle continues to exist thanks to the Kalegov family's own funds, donations, and the help of Belarusians themselves:

— I definitely wouldn't want us to be funded for salaries. It's one thing if someone helps you pay for utilities. It's quite another when an organization starts to live entirely on grants. The Lithuanians I work with don't live off funds. They have jobs, their own ways of earning money, and charity for them is truly charity, not a way to earn money. This approach is close to me.

However, she admits that a few years ago there were moments when she didn't know how to pay the bills:

— In 2022, we accumulated a utility debt of about sixteen thousand euros. Gas and electricity prices sharply increased then. We simply couldn't keep up with these expenses. But we managed to cope with it. Sometimes people think that the house where "Dapamoga" lives was given to us by the state. No, it is our family's property. My husband bought this house at market value. He even jokes that along with the house, he also lost his wife — she completely immersed herself in Belarusian affairs.

Natalia speaks of her husband with special warmth:

— He sometimes calls himself a misanthrope. But he endures all of this. He recently visited the Castle on business. He was fed solyanka here, he entertained himself, talked with people for a long time. I just smiled afterwards: "Well, is it drawing you in?"

Natalia sometimes thinks how little would be needed for the Castle to feel more secure:

— We don't have to pay rent, which reduces costs. And if every person we helped transferred us at least ten euros a month, we could do much more. But life isn't arranged that way. Instead, there are people who, after a few years, come and say: "You once helped me. Now it's my turn to help others." And this, perhaps, is the most valuable thing.

"Prison united them before. Now they have the Canaries"

Natalia Kalegova calls a retreat in the Canary Islands for former female political prisoners a special and very important initiative for her. In the spring of 2026, the first group spent several weeks there. A psychologist worked with the women, there were yoga classes, hikes, excursions, and simply time by the ocean.

Isn't that too expensive? Natalia replies that the choice of location was much more pragmatic than it might seem:

— If you say "Canaries," it sounds grand. But for Europeans, the Canaries are one of the most affordable vacation options. We spent approximately 20,000 euros: this is for 15-20 people, tickets, accommodation, food, excursions, car rentals. A villa for that many people cost about five thousand. I can't imagine how such a month-long retreat for so many people could be organized in Lithuania for this money.

Some of the costs were reduced thanks to volunteers: the psychologist worked for free, the yoga instructor also did not charge money, and Natalia's son, who works as a chef, helped with cooking.

Natalia knows the Canary Islands well — she has been traveling there with her husband since 2012. So she was well-versed in local logistics, prices, where to rent accommodation and cars. And she comments on rumors that the group allegedly lived in her own villa with irony:

— Unfortunately, we don't have our own villa there. As someone said that I rented out my villa — well, I would be very happy if I actually had one.

But the main thing for Natalia was not the project's economics. She wanted to physically extract the women from an environment where everything continued to remind them of prison, repression, and emigration:

— The most important thing I needed was for the girls to break away from this history, for us to rewrite it. And we succeeded. Before the retreat, they essentially had one strong shared negative experience — prison. And suddenly, they had another common story — the Canaries. Swimming next to whales in the open ocean, hiking, a trip to Teide, dancing on the shore. A different language around them, different nature, the endlessness of the ocean. All of this heals. I'm telling you about them now and realize that I've grown to love them very much.

Around the retreat, a small network of Belarusian solidarity gradually emerged: Belarusians were found on the islands who offered free photoshoots to the participants, helped with procedures, and simply joined their lives. And it is precisely this, and not the resort vacation itself, that Natalia considers the main outcome of the initiative.

Павялічыць

"My relationship with Belarusians is very similar to a marriage"

From the outside, it might seem that Natalia Kalegova's life consists of an endless series of problems: people arriving at the Castle, constant fundraising, conflicts, responsibility for others. Why, after all this, does she continue to do it? She doesn't even ponder the answer.

— It's service. Once you, in a good sense, get intoxicated by charity, you can no longer live differently. It's all about love.

Kalegova says she has never been very religious in the conventional sense of the word. But she has always been a person of faith:

— I believe that there are no random people in life. If a person came to you, it means it was meant to be. And after that, it's hard to pretend you didn't notice them.

She smiles:

— My husband sometimes gets angry. My family too. But they already know: you can't change me.

Despite years in charity, Natalia still calls herself a business person:

— I know how to earn money. But after everything that has happened, simply returning to only doing business is no longer interesting to me. I'm 60 years old; the older you get, the more you understand that you can't take anything material with you.

Then she suddenly remembers her son:

— He also left business and became a chef. And I think: he also serves people — he feeds them. Because service is doing your work with love.

I ask if there are moments when she wants to quit everything. She smiles.

— There is tiredness. But there is no desire to stop. My relationship with Belarusians is very similar to a marriage. First there is great love. Then comes daily life, tiredness, irritation. You see not only the good, but also what you don't like. And at some point you have to answer yourself the question: why are you still here? And if it's love, not calculation, you will stay with that person. It's the same for me with Belarusians.

She admits that sometimes her husband suggests selling some property, changing something in their lives:

— I always reply: you can sell everything. Except the Castle.

— Why?

— As long as Belarus needs it, I simply cannot. At the same time, I want Belarusians to learn not to wait for someone else to solve their problems. If we want a free Belarus, we must learn to take responsibility ourselves.

“I have normal relations with the Office, despite everything”

Dapamoga had accumulated many questions for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's Office. The main one was why the structures of democratic forces for a long time hardly dealt with the daily problems of Belarusians in Lithuania.

— When they were asked: "How do you help Belarusians in Lithuania?", they replied: "We don't have the resources for that. There is "Dapamoga"."

According to Natalia, the Office did not adequately protect the interests of Belarusians before the Lithuanian authorities. She recalls a conversation with Franak Viačorka when Belarusians had problems with migration issues. He said that the Office communicates with migration services and Lithuanian politicians, but Natalia considered such work insufficient.

Kalegova's separate remark is related to the events of 2021 and the scandal around "Dapamoga." In her opinion, Tsikhanouskaya, Viačorka, and other influential representatives of democratic structures could have tried to bring the parties to the conflict to one table.

— It happens in the diaspora: some quarrel begins between good people. And when we sit at a round table, many issues are resolved. That scandal had a very bad impact on all Belarusians. Everything could have been done differently.

— I have normal relations with the Office, despite everything. Sviatlana was at the "Castle" once. And after she came, we lost a certain number of donations. People probably decided that she was supporting us now. Talks began that Sviatlana supposedly gave me twenty thousand. But the Office never helped us financially.

Despite all the accumulated questions, Natalia does not want to join the critics' attacks on Tsikhanouskaya. She emphasizes: criticizing specific actions and decisions is possible and necessary, but for her, there is a line between criticism and collective harassment.

— For example, it doesn't bother me that Sviatlana travels the world. I'm not interested in her money — I don't finance her. Now only the lazy don't write that Sviatlana stole money, or something else. There's always something to criticize, but it should be healthy criticism for the benefit. And when everyone starts hounding one person — I don't like that. I would even rather help in such a situation.

“Another shelter might not be needed. It's better to create some real pension fund”

Natalia Kalegova has developed a unique relationship with BT propagandist Ksenia Lebedeva. Natalia jokes that she has become her peculiar "fan": she monitors her activities and regularly mentions her in her materials.

— She constantly makes films about me, follows me everywhere she can. But I'm even interested in watching her, because sometimes she gives useful information. You watch and think: "Here you need to be more careful."

Natalia once again caught Lebedeva's attention after the death of Belarusian journalist and blogger Uladzimir Usera. He died on December 6, 2025, in Białystok. Usera's last months of life were difficult: he had serious health problems, and shortly before his death, he was detained in Poland on suspicion of espionage. Due to his health condition, the court did not take him into custody, and after the hospital, he lived at the Caritas center.

— I knew him very little. He came to us for food a few times. And I felt very sorry for him, — Natalia recalls.

After Usera's death, Kalegova expressed her condolences. At that moment, she was in Tenerife, where she was already preparing a retreat for former female political prisoners: she was visiting villas and planning the logistics for the upcoming trip.

Lebedeva used this contrast. In a propaganda report, Natalia was shown against a backdrop of palm trees, contrasting her situation with the fate of the deceased Usera. In state television materials, this turned into the phrase "For some, the Canaries, for some, the morgue."

— Thanks again to Ksenia Lebedeva — she noticed the palm trees. Yes, I was in Tenerife then. We make these trips with our own money. It would be strange if I didn't have money. What, if I have money, should I necessarily give everything away to zero and not travel anywhere myself? I have a husband, we have our own money. I love the Canaries and go there twice a year.

But behind Usera's story, Natalia sees a more serious problem. In her opinion, the Belarusian community has learned to provide emergency help to those fleeing repression, but has not yet created a system of long-term support for people who are already in emigration and cannot cope independently due to age, illness, or difficult financial circumstances:

— The people who pulled him out should have taken care of him. I advocate for what Babariko spoke about — a mutual aid fund, for somehow solving pension issues. No one deals with this here. Another shelter, perhaps, is not needed. It would be better to create some real pension fund.

"My grandmother effectively ran her own Telegram channel"

Natalia Kalegova says she never understood jokes about the "patient Belarusian" who would endure everything and get used to anything. She was raised on entirely different stories.

Even as a child, she spent hours listening to her grandmother, who told stories about partisan Minsk, the underground, people who were rescued during the occupation, and about her own family, who survived repression.

— I always knew my family's history. That's why I could never agree when people said that Belarusians are people who just "endured and got used to it." No. For me, Belarusians have always been very brave. Not aggressive — yes. But brave.

During the occupation, her grandmother secretly listened to the radio, although it was punishable by execution, transcribed news by hand, and passed it on to others.

— I now joke that my grandmother effectively ran her own Telegram channel. She didn't think about heroism and simply did what she believed was right.

When one of her friends came saying that the Germans had taken her daughter, her grandmother found an acquaintance who worked at the passport office and helped save the girl. According to family memories, she thus managed to save more than one Jewish family from the Minsk ghetto.

They also didn't keep silent about the repressions in the house. Natalia's great-grandfather was arrested in 1928 after a few critical words about Soviet power. Relatives long thought he had been exiled to Kazakhstan. Only many years later, when the family gained access to his archival file, it turned out: he died in prison just three days after his arrest.

— We harbored no ill will. I was simply told the truth from childhood and allowed to draw my own conclusions.

That's why, Kalegova admits, photos of beaten Belarusians in 2020 unexpectedly reminded her of her own great-grandfather's story.

She carried this family principle through school as well. An excellent student who could have become a gold medalist once openly accused the principal of misusing money earned by schoolchildren in the collective farm. She did not receive a medal after that.

— Well, so be it. But I acted honestly. For me, people were always more important than any system. Perhaps that also comes from my grandmother.

"My Belarus is twelve hundredths of land"

At the end of the conversation, Natalia Kalegova suddenly recalls something very personal — about twelve hundredths of land near Zaslawye. This is her parental estate, which is currently under arrest.

— I never wanted to sell it. There are cedars my father planted. There are walnuts. It's not just land. You know, everyone has their own Belarus. For some, it's an entire country. But for me, Belarus is those twelve hundredths. All my life is there. My memory.

I ask if she believes she will return there. She doesn't even hesitate:

— Of course.

Then she smiles.

— I have already made arrangements with Lavon Volski, Dzyanis Dudzinski, Katya Vadanosava. When Belarus becomes free, we will hold a big concert there. On the shortest night of the year. I even know what it will all look like. I only don't know one thing — in what year it will happen.

For now, such a concert in Belarus remains more of a dream destined to happen one day. Meanwhile, the "Dapamoga" team is preparing to celebrate the organization's Birthday, which will take place on September 5 at the Castle, and has opened a symbolic fundraiser for those who want to support the organization's activities.

Павялічыць

We leave the Castle in the evening. Just before saying goodbye, Kalegova repeats an idea that, it seems, best explains everything that has been happening in this house for the sixth year:

— When a person comes to you in trouble, you can no longer pretend you don't see them.

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