Zmitser Bandarenka: “High time to take joint actions”

The coordinator of the civil campaign “European Belarus” thinks the Belarusian and Russian democrats should unite to resist the dictatorial regimes.

Zmitser Bandarenka shared his impressions on the Belarusian-Russian conference “Belarus–Russia: Rotation or Reset?” held in Minsk on August 27.

“I’d like t notice a high level of the conference. All Russian guests – Nemtsov, Ryzhkov, Milov, Gozman, Aleksashenko, Fedorov – are real stars of the Russian policy and expert community. I believe they will make their contribution to Russia. The forum also attracted many leaders of the Belarusian opposition, the leading independent economists and analysts,” Zmitser Bandarenka told in an interview to “European Belarus”.

Russia’s attitude towards the situation in Belarus has changed.

“Approaches of Russian democrats have changed,” Zmitser Bandarenka states. “We could hear some years ago that democracy would come to Belarus only from Moscow, but now at the conference we heard them forecasting Belarus would join the European Union and probably NATO. They also said Belarus would restore democracy earlier than the Russian Federation.

Listening to the orators, I caught myself thinking that it was the so called union state that had stopped a process of natural communication, sharing ideas and experience between politicians, economists and experts of the two countries for a long time

As the coordinator of the civil campaign “European Belarus” notes, the Russian and Belarusian democratic oppositions should unite their efforts to fight the dictatorial regimes.

“I agree with Boris Nemtsov ho said the Belarusian-Russian meeting was academic,” Zmitser Bandarenka said. “Discussing the ways of struggling against their regimes is important both for the Russian and Belarusian opposition.

I said in my speech that it was high time to work out a common strategy for the democrats of Belarus and Russia in our countries and on the international arena. We have the same problems. Joint struggle guarantees that the elites of democratic and European Belarus and democratic Russia will be able to find a common language.”