Belarus State in Two Minds about Ukrainian Writer

On the morn­ing Feb­ru­ary 11, the Ukrain­ian poet and writer Ser­hiy Zhadan wrote on his social page that he had spent the night in a cell, and his pass­port was stamped with “for­bid­den to enter” mark, and he had 72 hours to leave.

He was tak­en from the hotel to the police depart­ment at around 2 am. He was lat­er informed by the country’s secu­ri­ty agency, the KGB, that he was not allowed to be in Belarus because Rus­sia in 2015 banned him for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties (the log­ic pre­sum­ably stemmed from the stand­ing that Belarus and Rus­sia shared com­mon visa-free space).

The inci­dent sparked a wave of aston­ish­ment, fol­lowed by the state­ment of the Belaru­sian PEN-cen­ter and a request for expla­na­tion from the Ukrain­ian Embassy to Belarus. What has been the deter­mi­nant here is a mys­tery, but in the evening, the author report­ed that the stamp had been annulled. Ser­hiy Zhadan recit­ed some his works at the poet­ry fes­ti­val Ver­shy na Asvalce (VI inter­na­tion­al poet­ry fes­ti­val Poems on the Asphalt named after writer Mikhas Stralt­sou, takes place along­side with a large year­ly Book Fair); then the author has been off for Kyiv promis­ing to be get back in May with a music con­cert.

It should be men­tioned that today, new visa reg­u­la­tions come into effect allow­ing cit­i­zens of quite a large num­ber of states to vis­it Belarus with­in five days with­out a visa.