“It happened on 21 November. The protests had been going on for four months, and we lived in constant tension – nothing was changing, and we wanted to do something. At last, I was grabbed by an OMON cop, I struggled to get out of his grip, but he held me even tighter, and then three others rushed to his help. They caught me – one by my legs, two by my hands – and carried me to a bus. The horrifying thing for me at that moment was that it was happening in front of my child and my wife. It was a shock to me because the others had only been held by their arms and had been calmly led away. In my case, I was forced to resist. I started pushing and pulling, my shoes fell off. Because it was in our district, a lot of people recognised me. They knew I was their doctor. At that moment, the crowd began attacking the riot policemen who were carrying me away. The OMON cops even slowed down. They put me on the ground. I was beginning to think they would release me. The crowd was moving, and it was clear that the militsiya was getting nervous. People tried to throw bangers under their feet. I’m not sure why they threw bangers, it actually deafened me. I tried to get free, so one of the ‘omonites’ grabbed me from behind and squeezed my throat so I was choking. In that way they dragged me to the bus. There they started going at me, asking what I was doing there, hitting me, twisting my arms.”
“Protests and the present... Modern mass media played their role in it. Many people are now dependent on the internet, messenger, social networks. These have helped society gain awareness of what is going on. These modern media tools have allowed us to achieve something. Babaryka, Tsepkalo and others achieved a broader public awareness faster than if it had gone through the traditional mass media, because those have long been subservient to the current government. It was not possible to address a broad group of people via traditional mass media. Now, thanks to modern mass media tools, there has been an abrupt jump, and we began to feel that the opposition is not actually an opposition. Those in power are usurpers, and the majority is against them. The majority supports a change of government. So we realised that there is no opposition and that those who are in power are the minority. They are a minority, and they have to go. They have to yield to the will of the nation.”
“Everything – economy, politics – depends on a single group of people. The answer is banal – we must find suitable honest and unselfish people to lay the foundations for the formation of a new nation. Those Belarusians who have now expressed themselves are only just beginning to shape into a nation. After the fall of the USSR, the Belarusians were like strangers to each other. They just lived in the same territory, but each looking after his own needs. That has started to change now thanks to how we came together and started communicating with each other. This is only just starting to shape into a nation, into an opinion. The main thing now is for someone to prod and direct this nation to allow everything to develop a good way. The other spheres can be refined later – economy, etc. We are only just starting to respect and love each other after many years. It will take many more before some kind of Belarusian nation forms. Because this is just the beginning. It requires a lot of work still and the right direction.”
Gleb Mikhailovich Leonenko was born in Mazyr in the southern Homyel Region of Belarus on 19 April 1990. He was issued a “Chernobyl victim certificate” at birth, as Mazyr lies on the Pripyat River, within the radioactive fallout sphere of the Chernobyl disaster. His parents had hoped to have many children, but his mother became sorely troubled by the possibility of her children having health problems. His mother, Diana Nikolaevna Leonenko, works as a nursery school nurse. His father, Mikhail Viktorovic Leonenko, is a businessman. He has a brother, Daniil, who was born in 2002. Gleb studied at the Grodno State Medical University before switching to the Belarusian State Medical University in Minsk, which he completed in 2014. He married Sabina Musaeva from Minsk. He undertook his mandatory year-long postgraduate internship and medical practice at a policlinic in Minsk. He remained there as a general practitioner until his forced emigration. His wife led him to take a greater interest in politics. In May 2020 he completed a training course organised by Honest People to become an independent observer. He participated in the protests against the falsification of the results of the 2020 presidential election. During a protest at a shopping centre on 21 November 2020, he was arrested and beaten by a member of the riot police (OMON) and was then taken to hospital by an ambulance. Gleb subsequently contacted the MEDEVAC programme. In March 2021 he, his wife, and their daughter Emilie moved to the Czech Republic.
