Disrupting Infrastructure in belarus

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. We're looking at data and privacy from the perspective of two generations.

Paige:

I'm Paige Biderman, I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I'm David Biderman, I'm the boomer. I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice. In this podcast, we'll be having conversations with cyber hackers, privacy experts, and guardians of security who can explain some of this to me.

Paige:

And Dad, you forgot about whistle blowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say, "Thank you for listening to the show."

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. This is the podcast where my co-host, Paige Biderman, and I look at data, social media communications, and technology from two generational perspectives. I'm the inept boomer. And Paige?

Paige:

I'm Paige, I'm a student, and today, we are extremely fortunate to have our guest, Yuliana Shemetovets, who's the official spokesperson for the Cyber Partisans, a group of freedom fighters in our native country of Belarus. Belarus is, you've probably heard by now, governed by one of Europe's dictators, Alexander Lukashenko. It's been a common staging and transporting ground for Russia's attacks on Ukraine.

David:

And the Cyber Partisans, you've probably heard of them. This is the group that uses what's called ethical hacking to seek to promote democracy, and now regime change hopefully one day, and now also to aid Ukraine. And you all have accomplished some amazing things, which you'll talk about. Hijacking a TV station, launching cyber attack on trains carrying weapons and soldiers from Russia, and most recently, an unbelievable event is obtaining every passport of every Belarusian citizen and posting those that are affiliated with the dictator. But let's ask you, thanks so much for joining.

Yuliana:

Thank you guys. It was such a great introduction and a very good pronunciation of my last name. I appreciate it.

Paige:

Okay, good. I'm glad I got it right.

David:

That's great.

Paige:

We always like to start with asking a little background about our guests, so just where were you born, where did you go to school, how did you end up in the United States? And of course, how did you finally become the spokesperson for the Cyber Partisans and what are they?

Yuliana:

Sure, I'll try to be quick because it's actually kind of a long story.

David:

Take your time.

Yuliana:

Let me start with where I was born. I was born in Minsk, Belarus, and I grew up there. I had my undergrad degree in the Belarusian State University, I was studying international economy at the Faculty of International Relations. I was also simultaneously in my last two years studying in Prague. I was studying there business economy, but then I applied for a master's degree in the United States at Rutgers University. I got accepted, and once I finished my undergrad in Belarus, I decided to go and study my master's in the United States, and since then I stayed in the area. I'm now working at a nonprofit. I've always been an activist in Belarus as well. That's one of the reasons I left, because I couldn't continue living in the situation that was still the same back in the days.

It was just not maybe as known for people abroad and not many people were involved in changes, so there are not only many apolitical people in Belarus back in the days that thought, "Yes, we have a dictator, but as long as I can live my life, have my business and stuff, I'll be fine." Only then they realized how limited of a number of freedoms that they have even in economic sphere. That was my decision, but I couldn't step out from the activism. I was still involved in some work in the Belarusian diaspora, and when the protest happened in 2020, I started collaborating with the famous opposition figure Dmytro Shchygelsky, who is psychiatrist who diagnosed Lukashenko in 2000s, and that's one of the reasons he also left. Obviously because they were hunting him down and wanting to imprison and who knows what more. That's when I think around... Let me actually chime in Cyber Partisans.

Cyber Partisans were founded officially in September of 2020, after the protest, peaceful protest of people who went out to streets not only in Minsk for the first time, they went out to streets in smaller towns throughout the whole Belarus. They were brutally suppressed. 1,000s of people went through prisons, tortures in prisons, rape. Around 20 people died from the hands of the regime, so people wanted to respond, but they didn't know how they can respond and how they can respond to this brutality and violence. Belarusians at that time were not even ready to use any violent methods to defend themselves, yet alone try to damage the regime.

Cyber Partisans decided to use their expertise, knowledge and what they know, what they can do in order to fight back, in order to do something to show that the protests continue. And over time they realized they wanted to be in the coalition with people also on the ground, because you can do just things to some extent if you're fighting such a consolidated and strong regime. That's when the separative movement appeared. It's a coalition of three groups, including Cyber Partisans, and I was behind the foundation of this group. I was doing some internal work, setting up documents, setting up communication. It's actually, in any revolution you need to do a lot of boring, monotonous work, and that's what kind of was my project internally.

David:

You were doing this in New York at the time?

Yuliana:

Yes, I was doing it in New York. We had another person who's in the group who's also public speaker, and then a official political representative who's also New York, because at that point we couldn't have anyone in Belarus publicly speaking on behalf of the organization. They were all part of the underground movement, and they still are. After the official foundation of this movement, Cyber Partisans in July of 2021 hacked the Minister of Internal Affairs, and that's actually when they obtained passport information of all citizens. Just recently after the NFT, people realized, "Wait, what? They have passport information on everyone?" It actually happened earlier. I think there is now a second wave of people realizing what Cyber Partisans did, but it actually has happened a year ago. And they got a lot of attention, obviously.

For the first time in history, some activist group obtained passport information of all citizens. Many didn't believe, and then the Bloomberg did their own kind of investigation. They reach out to Cyber Partisans, they published this huge article where they confirmed the hack because they asked some random Belarusians, do you agree if you can check your passport information with Cyber Partisans, and that's how we can verify that they have actual database that contains this information? That's how they verified, and in this article they also talked with Gabriella Coleman. She's a great expert on hacktivism, she wrote a book on Anonymous. She's a professor at Harvard, and she also gave her comments saying that she has never seen anything like that. It's a different level. She's very excited, it's insane level of hack.

David:

It is insane.

Yuliana:

And we were so grateful for this comment, and then I think that's when Cyber Partisans received a lot of attention and they needed a person who would present their work, explain what they're doing, how they're different from hackers, what hacktivism is, what Belarus is, why do they need to use these methods in order to fight a dictator. Because even in 2021, after especially protest, like big protest finished, many in western world started to forget what's happening in Belarus, but repressions were actually continuing and it's still continuing. They detain people every day. They tried to find this person, and they offered me... Not they specifically, but the political representative, and I said no at first, I was too afraid. I said I am ready to do anything you want me to do, but not publicly, because I'm afraid I'm going to endanger my family and friends and all my ties with Belarus. But then over time they couldn't find anyone and a couple of my friends got detained.

David:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yuliana:

And being in this movement since I was basically a teenager, I realized if I'm not going to do everything possible, I know it sounds a little bit idealistic, but I wouldn't forgive myself, and that's how my journey started. I had unofficial interview with the group because it was still important for me to understand their strategy, their values, where they stand, what they want to achieve, and they also obviously needed to learn what my ideas are, what kind of person I am, and it went good. And since that time, since I think August, 2021, that's when I officially became a spokesperson.

But I was working on social media or answering journalist questions just in text, and then one of my ideas was to organize a conference with Gabriella Coleman after her comment. I reached out, I offered this idea. She was very helpful, very excited, and we had a conference also with some professors from Yale where we were discussing hacktivism and what Cyber Partisans are doing, also presenting the work properly. And it went well, and that's what I guess my first appearance is as spokesperson. It was in October, 2021. Yes.

David:

Wow. Without revealing too much, how do you interview with the Cyber Partisans?

Yuliana:

It was a little weird because they only communicate in text, so they would send their questions by typing, and I was doing my monologue answering with voice. It was like I talking to myself, it felt really weird, really awkward. But somehow it turned well.

David:

Wow. They use WhatsApp, the secure app or something more secure?

Yuliana:

I can't tell you.

David:

Oh yeah. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. That's right. Yeah, although I did, I think this is public that the Cyber Partisans have now developed a download app where people can communicate, or you might want to talk about that.

Yuliana:

It's a partisan Telegram. It works exactly the same as regular Telegram. Telegram is by the way, the open source application, so anyone can modify the code and customize it to its own needs, so that's what they did for Belarusians, but now actually we know that people in occupied territories of Russia and Ukraine using it, and we got interest from Iranian protesters that use Telegram a lot, and then they even reach out. One of the activists reach out and ask if we can add Persian language to the support of the application, which Cyber Partisans did, and we're very glad that we could help at least somehow to Iranian protests. And the application works actually the same as regular Telegram. The only thing that... One of the only additional functionalities is adding fake passcode, so for example, if your phone is searched randomly, which happens oftenly in Belarus, and we know it happens definitely in Ukraine, and then if this police officer see that you, let's say follow some opposition groups or you send information and you have some chats, they detain you right away.

What these passcodes do, you set them up and then when you give your phone, you can enter this fake password yourself, or when they ask a password, you give them the fake one. And then once they enter it, all the chats that you previously marked get deleted, all the groups get unfollowed, so you have a clean phone. We always recommend not to have it totally clean, but just to leave some chats, leave some groups that you follow and things like that. But then at least if you're not on radar, they're not going to detain you. Of course if they already know something that you did or if you're an activist, it doesn't matter what you have, but as a first level of protection, it definitely helps.

David:

Oh yeah, that's very sophisticated. We talked to a guy who, he was a former US military officer who helped Afghans get out of Afghanistan during our withdrawal, but he did an app, but he said they did the app so it would be a prayer sign so that if the Taliban saw they might not be suspicious. Anyway. For what it's worth.

Yuliana:

That's interesting.

Paige:

And just out of curiosity, from the perspective of that region, were people in general very surprised by Russia's invasion in Ukraine, or was it less surprising over there?

Yuliana:

I think less surprising. We were screaming starting in 2020 that the problem is not only Lukashenko, that Putin support Lukashenko, that he doesn't want let out Belarus out of his sphere of interest, so if you, for example, want to sanction Lukashenko, you need to sanction Belarus after 2020. And we were preparing for a scenario if the war starts, after especially a lot of conversations like that started prior to the war. Not everyone believed inside the group. Even inside the group, not everyone believed. They were like, "21st century, impossible. Putin probably will do his own power moves. He'll maybe invade Donbas, like [inaudible 00:14:54] and [inaudible 00:14:55] and that that's it. Not like the full invasion, which what he did. But part of the group, it doesn't matter, we believe or not, we need to be ready, and we were ready. When the war started, we had a set up place where people from Belarus can come, or from any other countries, in order then to go to Ukraine and fight on the Ukrainian side.

It was like a setup procedure, what can be done, and of course Cyber Partisans where working on the railways even prior to the war, because of these type of preparation, we always knew that railways will be used, Belarusian railways if it's... From both sides. If you're not talking about the war, it was still important to show that Lukashenko is not in charge of the key infrastructure that, let's say even Russian or Chinese businesses which are presented highly in Belarus, can not trust Lukashenko. In that sense it was still important to work on this infrastructure, but then from the other hand, we also knew if there is a war, Russia will definitely use Belarusian railways because Belarus and Ukrainian border is very close to Kiev, and that's how the attack on Kiev happened. It came from the north, it came from Belarus.

In that sense it was really important to try to damage the logistics, because if you can't set up proper logistics, obviously you can't continue attacks, and of course we always say that it's Ukrainian volunteers, Ukrainian military, Ukrainian army with some Belarusian fighters and volunteers too who protected and defended Kiev and Kiev area. But a little bit of percentage of support of course also came from Cyber Partisans who hacked the railway and who stopped the movement of Russian military trains. And we received a lot of grateful words from Ukrainian side, but that's the least what we could do is to try to stop the movement of Russian forces IN Belarus.

David:

Could you tell us a little bit more about the hacking into the trains? What happened and-

Yuliana:

Sure. The first hack happened around December, 2021. I didn't even know about this hack. No one knew. It wasn't publicly announced. Around, I think it's like 60% of computers were damaged, and Cyber Partisans wanted to see the reaction, how quickly they can return to normal working setup, how quickly they can figure out what happened. And then when in January, before the war started, when the Russian troops came for the first time to Belarus and they advertised it as if they came for joint exercises with the Belarusian army, they have an agreement between two countries that they have joint exercises, that they have some specific relationship obviously, two dictators, and that's when Cyber Partisans did a first attack that was publicly available. They targeted though that time commercial freight trains, because they got access to actually the emergency systems and automatic systems, but they didn't know how it works, so they were afraid to create emergency situations for general citizens because if you shut down everything at the same time, train stop, there might be some accidents they didn't know, so they're like, "Okay, let's target these freight trains."

Hoping that if they slow down their movement, it'll affect the movement of other trains like military trains because it's all connected, the network, the railway's network. To be honest, we don't know the effects of this first official attack in January. Some people say that yes, it did slow down, but we don't have facts so I can't share with you. But we know for sure that the systems inside were affected really badly. It affected on how the goods were transported, on the contracts. Let's say it was deleted and then they had to verify in order to pay or receive payment in Belarus, so that part of the job definitely was affected. And then in February, when the war official started, Cyber Partisans right away started working on the railway systems again, but that time what was different is that since the attack in January, many people who used to work at the railway station, they reach out to Cyber Partisans...

I probably shouldn't say many, but a number who worked internally. They explained to them how it works, what systems you can target. If you get that access to automatization systems, what you do in order not to create emergency situations. That's what actually changed the course for Cyber Partisans, and they had two attacks end of February, I believe it's February 27th and then March 3rd, where they turned off the modernization system, and it's responsible for pretty much everything, setting up routes, setting up lights, semaphores and all of it, so they had to do it manually. And on the Belarusian railways, they don't have enough people who have this knowledge because before the system would calculate everything, but then you had to do it on paper.

Also, they laid off many people after 2020 protests because they couldn't trust in many government departments, including state-run railways. If anyone went to protest, they couldn't trust them fully, so many people actually lost jobs in this type of employment, and especially railways. As we see, they prefer loyalism versus professionalism, and they didn't have enough people in IT sector to defend the systems and to even set up proper routes, so it affected... Unfortunately it affected the movement of ordinary trains too. People couldn't buy tickets electronically, they had to go to physical locations, and we apologized even, but then many reach out to us and they're like, "Stop doing this. People are dying in Ukraine, people sit in Belarusian prisons suffering. We can handle going to the physical location, that's fine." Which was really interesting. Yeah, so after these hacks, and plus there were some attacks on the ground, partisan attacks, it coincided at the same time, so they also disrupted some of the hubs of the railways.

And in combination of these two, the movement of Russian military train stopped completely. It was too dangerous for them. It was too dangerous for them to use the railways, they decided, and they also were afraid the Cyber Partisans can attack Russian railways as well, because Russian railway are kind of connected with the Belarusian railways. You can see from internal documentation that Cyber Partisans published, so for them it was I guess too much of a risk and they stopped. We know it after some time, they used it at least to transport all the damaged equipment from Ukraine, like burned tanks and stuff like that, but transporting in Belarus at that time, they didn't risk it.

David:

Wow. How long did that persist? Are they still stopped from using the trains?

Yuliana:

I think they started using it after some time. It doesn't mean that Cyber Partisans not going to do anything about that, but they started using it.

Paige:

And then from a public just standpoint, have they... Do the governments of Russia and Belarus, how their reaction has been to Cyber Partisan?

Yuliana:

Russia, I don't think they ever reacted to Cyber Partisans. As for Belarusian regime, they always say that it's CIA or FBI, or Mossad, or any other Western intelligence, or MI6 that behind those attacks, or their favorite, NATO. They say they can never accept that a group of [inaudible 00:23:31] specialists, a relatively small group, managed to bring so much harm to the Belarusian regime, so they always say, "Of course, we're fighting against such a strong opponent, NATO," or something like that. They said of course that the Western intelligence, Poland, Lithuania, whatever, they try to affect us, we're fighting against them and all of it. That's how they made comments. Recently actually on state television, which rarely happens, they at least acknowledge the hack of the databases openly. They're like, "Yeah, the group that's so called Cyber Partisans, which actually is NATO behind them or someone, they hack the databases." So they did say it.

And actually Lukashenko himself after the railways attack, he was giving interview to some Japanese journalist, and in the end of the interview he said that you shouldn't be afraid of nuclear weapons. I can tell you what's even more dangerous than nuclear weapons, it's cyber weapons. He's afraid of cyber weapons more than of nuclear weapons. Can you believe it? But that's actually what happened after the railways. I think he got really uncomfortable with all of these attacks coming from Cyber Partisans. And as for the disclosure, of course we are not working with any NATO specialists, any Western intelligence, and it's always funny to hear how Belarusians say, "Oh, their budget is like they have millions of dollars. Of course they are so strong." And we're like, "Can please someone give us at least part of this budget? We're trying to sell NFT to get at least some sources to pay for our servers. Can it actually be a little bit of reality?" But of course not. We don't work, we are very independent in that sense.

Paige:

Is a lot of the public within Belarus not even aware you guys exist because of how censored the media is?

Yuliana:

Yeah, public... No, because not many watch propaganda of state television, the number is actually crazy, especially in comparison to Russia. It's like 70% of the population using social media, YouTube or some alternative methods. Elderly population watches state-run media, but also even among them, there was a huge increase of using modern technologies after 2020. I can't give you a number, I don't want to lie, but the increase was crazy, so people know. It's actually one of the most famous opposition groups out of all, because they actually show results. Cyber Partisans actually show results inside Belarus, so people learn about it one way or the other.

David:

I know you can't talk too much, but just to... My understanding is that's it's this very small group, like 40 to 60, and if we could... And obviously don't tell us anything you shouldn't tell us, but just the background, and they're all in Belarus?

Yuliana:

The attack on, for example, Minister of Internal Affairs, when the attack happened, there were around 15 people, so it was a really small group-

David:

Oh, you're kidding.

Yuliana:

... although there was some help on the ground from partisans on the ground from our larger coalition. Before the war started there were around 30, and since the war started, there are now around 60, 70. And before the war, there were only Belarusians. After the war, there are some foreigners that joined the group, but only to some of the projects, not for example, direct attacks. Obviously they don't have access to the databases and data, but they provide some expertise on some scripts that might be used in the attacks in the future, or the actual support of work of the partisan Telegram application. But most of the members are Belarusians. All of them are from IT background. They used to work or still working as developers, [inaudible 00:27:34] testers, admins.

No one was a professional hacker. Everything was learned on the go from YouTube, [inaudible 00:27:42], I can learn hacking on YouTube. Any materials that you can Google. Obviously not going to share exact links, but that's how they learned, but what they told me a lot would taught them really well and gave them more confidence and expertise was just basically by hacking some websites. Some of the hacks are not even known. On some of them, they're just training and that's how they actually train new recruit, people who join the group. They're just we have access to this website, do this and that. It's not maybe even that important, but it's run by the regime, so that's how they train new people.

David:

Wow.

Yuliana:

Yeah. And when we say 60 people, some might think it's a lot. It's actually not, just because no one works full time, pretty much. Everyone is a volunteer. We don't know, but most likely most people have other jobs. I have a different job day-to-day, but whenever I have free time, I work example with Cyber Partisans and many do the same, so obviously not everyone can spend too much time sometimes. Of course when there is attack, I know that they were not sleeping for several days when the war started. There was a crazy attack, and we did say that the systems are poorly made. For example, some of the software was run on Windows XP, which is insane, but it doesn't mean that it was easy. It's probably will be easy for anyone like professional hackers, so maybe some intelligence services, but for the group that only was established in 2020, it was still hard.

And it is still hard to set up any serious attack. It's like research then getting into the system, and once you're in the system, you know can deface the website, but what the results will be, it's just fun for some time. But if you actually want to do the damage to the system, you need to explore it, you need to go to the domain in order to have an actual impact, and so they also cannot revert to the previous system, which can also sometimes can be easily done. The previous I mean version, right? It takes time to remove all the saved previously versions, to penetrate the system well, so it's still a learning process for some members, for sure. And we always ask people, especially in Belarus, obviously not in Western countries, we understand the risks of foreigners joining the group like that. But in Belarus, we have a lot of people on the list that want to join, but it takes time to verify people, to understand what they can do, if they're not agents.

Because KGB agents already, Belarusian KGB agents already try to infiltrate the group, so we're very careful with any newcomers. Obviously not even people who are in the group for a year don't have access to databases. That's the most sensitive information, so only the founders have access, and not even all of the founders have full access. It takes time to recruit, to train. Again, people have jobs and all of it, so we're trying to have at least data analysts for full-time, because they have a lot of requests from the Ukrainian government asking to verify people who are in Ukraine, and a lot of requests of course from Belarusian journalists who are investigating regime's crimes, and also working potentially on imposing sanctions on Lukashenko, which was happening before too, which we were also helping with.

Paige:

Just for our listeners who don't know a ton about that area, I was wondering if you could just talk about does what's happening in... It's so basic, but how does what's happening in Ukraine, how would Ukraine not having democracy anymore affect Belarus, and how does what happens in Belarus affect Ukraine? Vice versa?

Yuliana:

Very good question actually. I think in Belarus, yeah, people understand it, but even the connection between Belarus and Ukraine sometimes not understandable in Ukraine, as we see from some of the comments of people. Belarus and Ukraine have the same common enemy, it's Putin Kremlin regime, imperialistic regime of Russia. They don't believe that Ukrainian nation is supposed to exist, and they don't believe that Belarusian nation existing, and they don't want let Ukrainian and Belarus out of its sphere of influence, so if Ukraine is taken over by Russia, we don't have a chance. We don't stand a chance because Ukraine at least have the army, obviously the population ready to fight, they have the access to weaponry. In Belarus we don't have that, and there is our chance to have a free, independent and democratic state, because if Ukraine wins, when Ukraine wins, that it means that there will be changes in Russia and they will be distracted and they won't support Lukashenko as much.

If Lukashenko doesn't have Putin support, that's our window of opportunity, that's how we can change the situation. Policy with Ukraine, we never had any problems. We never fought with the Ukraine. We were always allies historically. People tend to forget, but actually Belarus as a part of... We had a union with Lithuanian Poland back in the days, which was called Duchy of Lithuania I think in English. Basically Belarus was called first Litvins, which then was changed to Lithuania. Anyway, so in the wars with Russia, we lost more men than in the Second World War, so we were fighting with Russian Empire till 18th century when they finally occupied Belarusian territories. Catherine the Great, she was the one who was the head of the state when the occupation happened.

And so since that time, there were several rebellions, people were fighting using also indirect methods because when you fight a strong army or a strong regime using some creative methods, there are a lot of partisan work, partisan movements, which why the name Cyber Partisans came from. It not only was a famous kind of activity during the Second World War in Belarus, but it was also even before fighting with Russian Empire. We would fight also sometimes with Ukraine, so it's just historical, culturally like an ally for us. While with Russia, it's a completely different story. Of course, after the occupation it changed. They tried to impose Russian language, they tried to impose the religion, so it did change some of the, of course the cultural setup. Of course the Soviet Union also affected a lot. But as we can see, people stand up every decade or so trying to fight back for the independent Belarus.

And at 2020 it grew bigger. It grew bigger. People I think started to realize that the regime lives in the Soviet Union era. They want to have better quality life. Also, Belarus is a relatively small country, we are very close to Baltic states. In Poland, every fourth person has a Schengen Visa in Belarus. In Russia, for example, I think only 30% of the population has a foreign passport, and not all of them travel, so for us, we always know how Europe lives. We are very European city. We consider ourselves European country. Maybe not everyone would want to join European Union, but still we are not Asia. We're not like some other culture, we're European country, and the same goes to Ukraine in that sense, so many would travel, see and want to have this level of influence on the government and how the economy develops, technology. More people wanted to participate in political life.

Also the way Lukashenko dealt with COVID, it was really atrocious, and people realized no, we can only rely on ourselves in that type of events. Again, you need to have allies, you need to be strong in order to fight back such a strong empire like Russia, even though obviously we see it's weaknesses in the army even. But that's what goes to Baltic states, they also join usually union. We also see how they respond to Russian aggression. They're much more decisive and much more open, and then in that sense, we can't just on our own fight Russia. The same we see Ukraine, obviously they're crazily braver people, they fight back and first thing they showed how they can fight, and only after that Western countries started to support them even more, like with weapons and stuff, but they first needed to show of course.

But still they receive a lot of assistance. Without this assistance, it would be really hard to fight Russians, so we do realize realistically we need allies. Ukraine is our most organic ally, and I think Ukraine also now understands that they need to have a good ally neighbor and democratic government in Belarus so they can rely and not be afraid that they can attack again, because Lukashenko before pretended, was trying always to balance between [inaudible 00:37:20] trying to be friends with Ukraine. They were actually on good terms with Zelensky before 2020, so they were like... Ukraine obviously doesn't have resources in order to help the opposition in Belarus, they're not as developed country, but they did support in 2020 the protests. They at least openly supported.

They received a lot of activists, but they didn't have a proper strategy because they kind of believed maybe that Lukashenko won't attack or won't let territories to be used by Russians for the attack. But now they realized that once he did it once, once he crossed this red line, he can do it again. So now obviously they're also interested in Belarus being safe for them. They care about their own safety obviously, so what kind of government can be there so it is safe?

Obviously a democratic government that is aligned with Europe, is not aligned with Russia. Also now it's obviously in their interest that the country changes it's regime. To what extent they can help, we'll see, but they do show some support for the Belarusian regiment fighting in Ukraine, named after Kastuś Kalinoŭski, one of the, I guess, biggest rebel against Russian Empire. We're also working closely with this regiment. We fully support them, so we'll see what can happen in the future, but now they're much more interested in having a proper kind of, I think, strategy towards Belarus in general and what they want there to have, and what kind of regime they will support in the future, or even now, meaning the opposition of Belarus.

David:

Could you, for our listeners, tell us a little bit about what happened in 2020 that started to change things so much?

Yuliana:

Sure, yeah. I'm mentioning it so many times, and then I never explained it. There were elections in Belaruss in 2020. Except for the elections in 1994, which were first free and recognized elections and fair elections since the Soviet Union collapsed, so since that time, none of the elections were free and fair in Belarus. Lukashenko changed the constitution in 1996, which allowed him to be reelected as many times as possible. He suppressed protest in 1996, in 2000, and each actually cycle of elections had protests except for 2015, but in 2006 we had a huge protest. In 2010 especially, which highly affected me, for example. I was a teenager and watching how people were beaten up, people that I know were beaten up, and put into prison. Was very, I think influential in that sense. And then in 2020, the elections again caused a lot of protests, but this time it was slightly different. People, I think... Several reasons. We had also protests even before 2020, in 2017, for example, which didn't coincided with the election cycle, which was different, but people went out to the streets protesting the tax on unemployment.

David:

I heard about that. Unbelievable.

Yuliana:

A pretty crazy decision by the government, yes. That's when people started to realize, "Wait, they're using real old school methods. Why is it happening?"

David:

Yeah, would you tell our listeners about the tax on unemployment? That's unbelievable.

Yuliana:

Yeah, if you don't work, you're supposed to pay money to the government, otherwise you have some time to find job, because the regime believed that you are just hiding some money that you didn't pay taxes on, and since they always missing money because of their corruption schemes and they need to support some state-run companies, they needed to extract this money from people. It is insane. I think they even canceled it because of how people reacted, but they're reminiscent of the Soviet Union era techniques. They used these methods. That's when not only politically involved people started to realize that there is disconnect between the regime and the desires of people, because many before from the opposition where people who supported Belarusian culture, language was in a good sense very nationalistic, and they always consider Russia as a threat, and some more apolitical people would like, "Oh, we still need to trade with Russia. It's okay. It's not the enemy. Let's work with the regime." Like trying to maybe change the regime, but nothing else.

But also what was different in 2020, COVID heat and Lukashenko was famously saying, "You need to treat it with vodka and going to sauna, and that's how you treat COVID, and COVID actually doesn't exist and only fat people die from it, or sick people." And people got really frustrated because of course numbers were high, people were getting to hospitals, medical employees were having crazy shifts. They didn't receive any support from the regime. People were organizing to bring their food when they were overworking and having night shifts and all of it. Water. They were helping people... On their own, they were helping people who got into hospital, so who got sick but couldn't even just go to the hospital because they were too weak. And that's when Belarusians I think also realized they don't need the regime to solve their problems. They can rely on themselves and be really well self-organized.

And then one thing led to the other. We had pretty strong candidates in 2020. One of the businessmen who was actually accepted by different types of populations, social classes, people really thought that he can build up good economy because many people cared about that, but also keep the sovereignty and independence. And then there were another candidate who is the husband of Sergei Tikhanovskaya, who is now kind of a symbol of Belarusian opposition and protests. He was very popular among people from villages, towns, smaller towns, kind of like just regular workers. Not maybe hipster population of capital in Minsk, but like normal people with, I don't know, farmers and all of it. He also... And again, explaining, usually people from the villages and older population, they're the ones who still support Lukashenko usually, so he approached them, advocated, explained, and they're like, "Yeah, actually we now realize that the problem is the regime actually."

They stopped watching propaganda, they switched to YouTube, let's say. It was already boiling in the society, this dissatisfaction with Lukashenko who in power for almost 30 years. People got tired, people realized he's a joke, especially the way how he approached COVID, and the candidates used different media, some techniques to reach out the greater population. Then Tikhanovskaya Svetlana ran for her husband, and she became the only alternative candidate, and Lukashenko let her be there just because he didn't think that she can be a threat and that she can unite people against him. But at that point, to be honest, people didn't even need to have someone to lead them. They just went out on the streets by their own. They wanted to vote. Even on the factories, factory workers went out and voted for the alternative candidate, and when Lukashenko visited a couple of state-run companies, the biggest one that our economy depends on a lot, they were shouting at him, go away.

For the first time they've heard regular workers at the state-run companies who also usually were observed to be like Lukashenko, or considered to be Lukashenko supporters, but no one actually knew, but just took it for granted. But they for the first time went out and they shouted, "No, we don't want you." And people screamed, "Who all for Tikhanovskaya?" And you can see it in the videos, and then people raise hands. 90% of people on these companies raised hands, so it was really big, and the numbers of people in one day, like 500,000 went out to streets in different cities, approximately around this number. And maybe it sounds not as much, but Belarusian population is around 9.4 million people, so it's like 5%, which is a huge number if you compare it to any other protest in the past. And these protests, there was I think a hope even for me. I, like many people, didn't know about how regime was brutal before, just because it always covered well, and if you're not specifically interested, you like disregard.

I knew how they kill people in 2000s, how they suppressed protest before, but even I thought that maybe among elites, someone would just side with the people and that it will change. And Lukashenko would never let power being taken from him, but maybe someone from inside would see how many people, and someone did, but just not enough. The protests were then brutally suppressed. They started to beat up people. The images are horrible. Many went through tortures in prisons, through rape. It's all documented, but protests didn't stop. People saw the violence. Even those... We have many examples of people who were kind of Lukashenko supporters. Once they saw this violence, that's the red line for them because they thought Lukashenko is fair. Yes, he's a dictator, but he's fair, so it's better to have someone that we know then someone new, unexpected, who God knows what's going to do with the country

And there's also this legend that he can protect the sovereignty of Belarus from any other invasion, so let us have him. But then once they saw this violence, that's also what changed the course of protests. There are many people on the streets, but once the first night people were beaten up and tortured, and in our 21st century, people can take videos these days, and it was shared with the public. And that's what Cyber Partisans also did. They put these video clips on the national television in the internet that, one of the probably first hacks that they did.

David:

Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

Yuliana:

Major hacks. And people reacted, like we can't forgive it. We had even protest of elderly people that went out to streets, like, "What you going to do with us?" Even though they still detained elderly people. We had women's protests where only women went out to the streets, where men were beaten up and detained, and in a couple of days they were just too afraid. Student protests, so it affected different classes, and people would go out to the streets until... For six months for sure, but large protests were happening I think until the end of October, so since August to October. And then it slowed down because people were just too afraid, and it's understandable because the repressions didn't stop now. Lukashenko understands, nothing is forgiven, nothing is forgotten, and if he stops this level of repressions, people might go out again, so he still detains. He detains...

They go after family members of activists abroad, they go after businessmen, they go after people who were just on the protests and they took photos of them, and now after analyzing 100 of 1,000s of photos, they're going after these people as well. It's a pretty crazy situation right now in Belarus still. And we call it usually, before Lukashenko had some support, we can't say everyone was against him. He probably had around 20%, maybe 30%. Now it's around like 20%, but as long as the army and special police officers loyal to him, as long as he has this force, it's really hard to change the regime and to fight back. But people are still trying. There are a number of underground movements, and I think the war also changed the perception of many people understanding now what kind of danger Lukashenko brings to Belarusian people.

Because before he would always promise, "Okay, there will be no war with me. I will protect Belarusians from any kind of war." Because it's in our mentality, in Belarusian mentality, Belarus is the mostly affected nation after Jewish people in the second World war. The gender balance is still not equalized. It's in the middle of everything, so every fourth person died in the Second World War, so it's in our kind of mentality and memory that the war is the worst thing that can ever happen, so people are afraid of this. But now the worst thing possible happened, so people are definitely not... Even from what we hear from Lukashenko supporters, they're like, "What are you doing? How can you explain why Ukrainians became an enemy? Why did we align with Russia? Why did we let Russia kill Ukrainians from our territory?" This is the reality we live in.

But there are also some people who just got too afraid and became apolitical again. We call them [inaudible 00:51:41]. You can divide the society are now probably 20%, 20% to 30% still kind of Lukashenko supporters, potentially 30% that are just too afraid so they're apolitical. They're trying to psychologically protect themselves, but they most likely will side with any protest if any starts, and then they're 30% who are still active, who are secretly either working with different groups that are set up abroad, like with our group separative movement we have still people in Belarus, even among Cyber Partisans, some of them are still in Belarus, if you believe [inaudible 00:52:18], so there is still obviously people who are ready to do, but we need to be careful because especially now, they're not just going to be beaten up by the Belarusian police officers. They might be shot by the Russian troops, because there are Russian military in Belarus right now, so the stakes are really high.

Paige:

Do you think there's a risk of Lukashenko and Russia getting Belarusians to fight for Russia within Ukraine?

Yuliana:

Yeah, there are a lot of discussions like that. What are the chances? What do people predict? From our internal resources, for now, it's not the case, and I think I also read a report from American intelligence saying that they also don't see any signs that Belarusian army will join and go to Ukraine. There are a couple of reasons. First, obviously it's not well-prepared. Russian soldiers would fight in Syria, in Georgia, in Ukraine in 2014. They have experience, they have resources. Belarusian army, they never had this. They're very unprepared and they don't have all the technologies, even proper ammunition, like ammunition from Soviet Union times. It's not what NATO soldiers use, or even Ukrainian soldiers use, or even Belarusians fighting in Ukraine have. That's obviously one of the reasons, but also if they go, they will die. A lot of people will die, and it's dangerous for Lukashenko.

He won't have support of the army so he can protect himself, but also it will affect definitely the society, even those who support Lukashenko, because we don't have this compensation like Russia has if a member of your family dies during the war, so there will be no payments. And also in Russia, what Putin does, which is I guess not smart, that's the bad word, but kind of makes sense to do, he mobilized mostly people from far away citizen, like towns. Not from Moscow, St. Petersburg. They use small nations, they use Asian population, Caucasian population to be mobilized and sent to Ukraine, so when the coffins go back to these very poor towns and cities, and it's much more poor than in Belarus, the level there is insane, they don't have toilets, normal toilets. They have toilets outside as a hole, that's the kind of type of level of living they have there.

Once the coffins go back there, it doesn't make such big news because people who are usually vocal, they're in the big cities, but in Belarus it will be different. It's a compact, relatively small country. If coffins start to go back, everyone will know about it. Everyone will tell neighbors, people, relatives, and all of it because it's not as huge as Russian and people get to know the news from other regions as well. But also, especially if he starts mobilization, that's the third reason, he will need to give weapons to people, and he doesn't trust his own people. He doesn't trust to give out weapons to potential activists, and we kind of encourage. People are afraid of mobilization, but some experts in Belarus say, "No guys, he should do it, and it means we're going to get weapons." But he knows it, he's too afraid, he never done it. And he doesn't sometimes trust even his own circles.

Of course, he doesn't trust people who will pretend to support, but then will try to fight back. And even the army might turn around. We don't know, it's hard to analyze the moves inside. We receive some internal information, but it might be very subjective, so be afraid to give these kind of analysis, proper analysis. But even the army might turn their hands back to Lukashenko, and he also is afraid of this risk, so it's very unlikely that he will send the Belarusian army, but it's still possible. Everything is possible now. Even nuclear attack is possible, so in that sense, we are preparing for this scenario. We are trying to reach out to Belarusian soldiers. We provide information on Belarusian soldiers to Ukrainian authorities so they can have their own maybe targeted campaign, so we do try to connect and explain and show what's happening with Russian occupiers in Ukraine and what will happen to Belarusian soldiers if they decide to do it.

And I was explaining there is no reason, there is no motivation. It's even less motivation than in Russia. In Russia, at least they had this propaganda since 2014 saying that Ukrainians all Nazis and [inaudible 00:57:21], however they call them, and all of these fascists love it. In Belarus, we didn't have it. Only since the war started, Russian propaganda became more influential, but before that, people were not brainwashed. Of course, after five years it might be different, like in Russia, but for now, people are not brainwashed, so that would be another reason that definitely affects Lukashenko's decision. But if Putin needs it, Putin wants it, I think he'll get what he wants. Either with or without Lukashenko. For now, again, it's unlikely, but it's still possible and we need to be ready for this scenario.

David:

Thank you so much, Yuliana. Thanks for your time. It's been great talking to you.

Paige:

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. This is so interesting.

Yuliana:

Thank you so much guys. Thank you.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data, and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.