Flew NATO personnel to Afghanistan and dropped humanitarian aid in Sudan, then ended up in prison due to a denunciation from a friend in Ukraine

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"Was in the first Belarusian crew to land in Kabul three months after the start of the war"

Vadzim is a man of the world. His father was Russian, born in Ukraine when his father's ancestors moved there, and his mother is Ukrainian, originally from Chernihiv. The interlocutor himself was born in Uzbekistan when his father was serving there.

Vadzim dedicated his entire life to aviation. His father flew fighter jets, and he himself was born in a military unit and traveled between those units with his parents as a child. In 1988, Vadzim entered navigation school, and in 1991, he served in the Soviet army. Later, his father was offered service in Belarus, and so the family ended up in our country, where Vadzim received his flight education. In 1994, he joined "Transaviaexport" — an airline that transports cargo on freight planes.

"From 1996, I flew the Il-76 as part of a crew. When I was still serving in the Soviet army, I was a technician for MiG-29 and MiG-23 aircraft. At 'Transaviaexport,' I retrained as an Il-76 flight engineer and flew in that position for 26 years," the man says about his journey.

Vadzim explains that the Il-76 flight engineer is responsible for loading and unloading the aircraft, ensuring that the cargo inside is properly secured, and generally for the technical condition of the cargo compartment. However, Vadzim, when not at base, could also help with repairs of other parts of the aircraft.

Павялічыць

Sometimes he also had to transport passengers, including military personnel. But the interlocutor says he did not transport Belarusians:

"These were Spanish servicemen whom we transported to Afghanistan when the NATO mission was there (2001. — NN). Together with NATO planes, we delivered everything needed for the army — ammunition, pasta, armored vehicles, something for construction. I don't think this is a big secret, as everyone knows well what cargo aviation was doing, especially since it was an official contract.

I was in the first Belarusian crew to land in Kabul three months after the start of the war. When I accumulated more than a hundred landings, I stopped counting. Kabul, Bagram, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar — we were in many places. And when Operation "Shock and Awe" began in Iraq, we flew there too. There were also many landings there, as we worked at many airfields, needing to supply troops and transport cargo between points."

When the Soviet army was fighting in Afghanistan, Vadzim was studying at school, so he didn't participate in that campaign. He recalls hearing many stories about "international duty" both at school and in the garrison school. But when he himself ended up in Afghanistan, he realized: there was no duty, and the USSR came to the country with an invasion — similar to how Russia came to Ukraine.

Vadzim and his colleagues transported humanitarian aid to various countries:

"I personally participated in the transportation of humanitarian cargo to Venezuela when they had landslides; I saw Maduro and shook his hand. A lot of such cargo was transported to South Sudan when we worked with the UN World Food Programme; we flew there from Ethiopia and parachuted various food items. After they separated from Sudan, problems began, and people were severely starving.

Павялічыць

We flew there very actively. We made two flights a day, flew 6 days a week, dropped about 30 tons of cargo per flight, and this went on for several years. Mostly it was grain, but there was also oil, baby food, a lot of things."

As for life outside of work, Vadzim started a family, raised a child with his wife, and was renovating their house. They lived a normal life until Vadzim was arrested.

"Why should they imprison me? I haven't betrayed Belarus."

Vadzim recounts that a few years before his arrest, he reconnected with an old friend who lived in Berdiansk — now this Ukrainian city is under Russian occupation. When the full-scale war began, Vadzim and his friend corresponded a lot in a WhatsApp group chat, which also included mutual acquaintances.

The man recalls:

"They were very happy — saying, 'Russia will bring order here now,' making various statements against Ukraine. I asked them — 'Are you crazy?

The father of that comrade was born near Chernihiv, and he himself studied at the Chernihiv flight school. And I asked him: 'How can you do this? You are Ukrainian yourself, what, are you a traitor?'"

Then the friends had a falling out, and Vadzim was kicked out of the group chat. In August 2022, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces were conducting a counteroffensive, Vadzim wrote to that acquaintance "Glory to Ukraine" and asked if his (the acquaintance's) side was winning.

"I said that [Ukrainians] would reach Berdiansk, and then [they would get] to him. He started threatening me — saying, 'Watch out, or they'll imprison you.' But why should they imprison me? I haven't betrayed my country, I haven't asked anyone with their government to come to the territory of Belarus," says Vadzim.

In October 2022, two KGB officers came to Vadzim's workplace. The man was taken into a separate office, and they began asking questions about which intelligence agency he worked for. They demanded Vadzim's phone. While he was leading the security forces to the place where the phone supposedly lay, he took the phone out of his pocket and tried to break it. It didn't work.

"They twisted my arms, called the police. They arrived and started interrogating me — without lawyers, of course. I said — I don't know what those officers want from me or on what grounds they should inspect my phone."

Павялічыць

As a result, the man was taken to the Akrestsina detention center and given 15 days of arrest. When it was time for his release, Vadzim was taken to the Smalyavichy District Police Department — the man and his family were finishing building a house in that area. While being transported there, they told him that old cartridges, left to Vadzim by his father-in-law (a hunter), had been found in that house during his arrest.

"I just found them in the house and put them in a box. I come from a military family and served myself, so for me, cartridges are not something supernatural, although, of course, I should have handed them in," Vadzim explains.

When they arrived at the police department, he wrote an explanatory note about the cartridges, and then Vadzim was sent to a cell for the night. In the morning, he was taken to an office where Vadzim saw his phone in the hands of the security forces — the judge who had given the man 15 days had previously ordered the gadget to be returned to him. Subscriptions to "extremist" channels and the forwarding of one of the links were found on the phone, for which he was given another 15 days.

As those days were ending, old acquaintances came to Vadzim in the detention center — the same KGB officers from whom his arrests had begun.

"They said: 'We still want to find out who you work for.' They had opened my phone and seen many Ukrainian numbers, because I have friends and relatives living in Ukraine. They began asking whose numbers these were, and I explained to them.

Then they started asking again about who I work for. And when I was serving my days [in jail], I understood who could have denounced me, so I told them."

Vadzim is referring to that same acquaintance from Berdiansk whom he once considered a friend. When he was released, he was sent a screenshot of their correspondence — there, the Ukrainian admits that "his help was needed" for the arrest.

The day after that conversation in the detention center, Vadzim learned that a criminal case had been opened against him for the cartridges under Article 295 — "Illegal actions concerning firearms." He was held in Zhodzina prison until January 2023, until a trial took place, at which the man was given "home chemistry" (house arrest with restrictions).

Павялічыць

And the day before the trial, Vadzim had a meeting with one of the security officers. There, they presented him with a printout from that same WhatsApp chat where his problems began. They specifically drew attention to a message in which Vadzim called Lukashenka a "scum" and extracted an admission that he had indeed written it — allegedly, the conversation was unofficial.

"An old laptop and a suitcase — all I've accumulated in my 55-year life"

In April 2023, the Smalyavichy investigator informed Vadzim that a criminal case had been opened against him under Article 368 for "insulting" Lukashenka. The man recalled the January conversation:

"I told him that when we spoke with that officer, he told me that the conversation had no legal force, there wasn't even a lawyer present, and my phone was inspected illegally. They shouldn't have had that information."

Vadzim then drafted a petition with all the information that, in his opinion, made that criminal case illegal. At the next meeting with the investigator, he had to withdraw the petition — instead, the investigator suggested remaining free until the trial.

At the end of June 2023, Vadzim was sentenced to two years of imprisonment, which he served in the Babruisk penal colony. He was released in February 2025.

The path to aviation was closed for Vadzim because in Belarus, they only hire with a certificate of no criminal record. To get a job in that field abroad, he would have to undergo refresher courses, which means going back to state structures — and likely encountering nothing.

"I absolutely don't want to go to Africa and work in bandit-run companies there. While I was in prison, a [cargo] plane was shot down in Sudan, and there were several people in the crew whom I knew.

And when I was released, I met an old acquaintance, and he showed me a photo of another plane that had been shot down. There were also acquaintances in that crew. And the man told me — don't even think about going there, no matter how bad things are, you just won't come back from there," says Vadzim.

He decided to leave Belarus and moved to Poland, where he applied for asylum. There, Vadzim found work as a car mechanic and spends 12-13 hours a day, six days a week, in the garage.

The most difficult question is how to live on:

"I've been building something my whole life, and now I'm quite old, I thought I'd be building a house and raising grandchildren, though I don't have any yet. But now I have to start everything anew, because I left here with an old laptop and one suitcase. That's all I've accumulated in my 55 years of life."

Vadzim says that if one doesn't know Belarusian prisons from the inside, it might seem as if stories about prison horrors are exaggerated and that some laws still work there. And only when he found himself behind bars did he realize how difficult the situation with prisoners' rights is there — the man calls it a catastrophe.

"We were taken to a club to watch documentaries. One time, they showed a film about how fascists in Belarus held Soviet prisoners of war. They showed the barracks where they were kept, recounted how they were tormented, not given blankets or pillows.

And we, the political prisoners, looked at each other and thought: 'But we were kept in the same conditions!' But at least the fascists tormented another nation, while you torment your own, and that's just strange," Vadzim concludes.

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